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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Qtr^H 

Chap.__ Copyright No. 

Shelf. ... Ml 1 $ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 



x 



Birds and Books 



By WALTER LECKY. 



Author of "Billy Buttons," "Green Graves in Ireland,' 
"Impressions and Opinions," "Short Stories," etc. 



• 




BOSTON : 
ANGEL GUARDIAN PRESS, 

1899. 






Copyright, 1899, 

By the Angel Guardian Press, 

boston. 






AUG 11 1893 



^ 







>Vo o% <3 



'WM^- \%^.^^ . 



TO 

Wtllanova College, 

ITS FACULTY AND ITS 
STUDENTS. 




W&LL 1 1 m^ 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 




Y first sight of 
a bullfinch was 
in one of the 
most north- 
ern of Irish 
i* 1 ^ counties, 
wild and pic- 
turesque Donegal. It was on an early June 
morning, one of those Irish mornings which 
ever after haunt the imagination. The 
soft, grey, Irish sky above, and in its 
folds the lark, spilling music, which seems, 
on such a morn, more like the voices of 
spirits communicating to earth a bit of 
celestial bliss than the earthly songs of 
birds ; the yellow swaying oat's stalks, 



IO BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

and beyond them the burnished helmets 
of the furze, from whence came the clear 
note of the mavis carolling to his lady 
love. Add to this the piping of that gay 
serenader, the Irish blackbird, "with his 
beak of gold," and the soft, low crooning 
of a little Irish river at my feet, whose 
melody, methought, as some old tales 
sped through my brain, was but the luring 
song of a dripping mermaid fair, who 
might, did I venture near, do to me as 
she had done to Goethe's poor fisherman. 
Among such scenes came my first bull- 
finch flitting among a little group of haw- 
thorn trees, showing me his black cap and 
his dark brown breast ; when lost to my 
view, in the shrubbery, still recalling his 
presence by a few notes in a swift flute- 
tone, that caught my boyish heart, and 
aroused the enthusiasm and unbounding 
ambition of youth to capture all its fancies 
within my breast. So I followed him 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I I 

from shrub to shrub, from tree to tree, 
held by his beauty, following the law of 
human greed, even dominant in youth, un- 
til the gay fellow, weary of my attentions, 
went into the sunlight as if he was a part 
of it, held my eye for a moment, and, like 
all the things we cherish, faded from my 
view. With his going came the old spirit, 
so masterly portrayed in La Fontaine's 
fable of the Fox and the Graces. 

Distance lent him no enchantment ; his 
absence and above all his noble unwilling- 
ness to be my prisoner made his beauty 
despised 

" Things, bad begun, 

Make strong themselves by ill. " 

My next meeting with the bullfinch was 
in a sleepy, old Tyrolese town, fond to my 
heart by its lack of modernity, and its ab- 
sence of tourists, and it has other claims, 
memories of Hofer, whose life I once read 
in a little green volume, crying myself to 



12 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

sleep over his tragic fate ; memories, too, 
but more broken and blurred, of the 
Minniesingers, one of whom, in Italian 
marble, crowns the square, and in his 
quaint armor, for poets in those far-off 
merry times were warriors as well, a thing 
befitting when actions followed so quickly 
words, lends a glamor to this Old World 
town. 

In front of the statue is a little cobbler's 
shop ; the owner bears an Italian name, 
but his look and speech are German. A 
travelling friend, listening to his rich voice 
singing a lyrical snatch from Schiller's 
William Tell, the shepherd's song, saw 
in this evidence of his Italian descent, as 
if the Tyrolese were not as musical as the 
Italians. He went on the plan of those 
wearying scientists who, meeting with a 
fact and not knowing the causes, boldly 
invent them, and then stamp them for all 
time with their dogmatism. Our friend 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 3 

the shoemaker, for such he afterward 
became, was proud of his speech and his 
country, a characteristic which at once 
engaged my respect. How could it be 
otherwise, just fresh from a study of Scott 
and his ringing lines in my ear. The cob- 
bler had been in the army and had a rare 
fund of anecdotes, amongst them his hobby 
which he always mounted in front of an 
audience, and those of us who laugh at 
the show forget that we are only unhorsed 
for the time, ready at the first convenience 
to remount. And I do not hesitate to say 
that on this same mount the very best 
money's worth in life is to be got in the 
riding. The nag our friend rode, to me a 
most interesting creature, was "Bullfinch 
training," which he illustrated, illuminated, 
if I may say so, with his pet which hung 
above his head. And what a pet, coming 
to the cage door at his master's greeting, 
hopping on his finger at command and 



14 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

whistling a pathetic little German lied, on 
his satisfying, curious perch, then returning 
to his cage with huge gravity, the reward 
for his effort a few grains of hempseed, 
given to him with a kindly heart. 

And as the bird ate, what light shone 
in the cobbler's eyes, what words of sweet- 
ness and richness came to his mouth. 
How I envied him, while reading in his 
eyes that Bully was above price ! 

The third time I met Bully was under 
other skies and sad circumstances. I was 
walking down Vesey Street, New York, 
when the sound of a drunken sailor's voice 
awoke me from my reveries. 

In his hand he held a cage which now 
and then he violently swung around his 
head, and in the cage was Bully, be- 
draggled, tailless, a perfect bit of bird 
misery. How different from the gay and 
saucy fellow that had first captivated me 
among the Irish meadows, how different 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. IS 

irom the sleek, well-fed pet of the German 
cobbler ! Around the drunken lout were 
grouped a crowd of children, all of the 
lower classes, dirty and frail-looking, upon 
whose poor features I discerned that 
human pity which has brought joy and 
sorrow to the earth, but which is after all 
one of God's noblest gifts. 

How easy to read in their little pinched 
faces the anger which aroused their little 
hearts, and made them band together to 
rescue the ill-fated Bully, and I entered 
into their secrets, and, as diplomacy was 
better than force, Bully became my pet 
for a crisp new dollar-bill. So I bore 
him to the North with much objections 
from a colored porter who, following the 
godless cult of the syndicate he repre- 
sented in so menial a manner, dubbed the 
miserable bird a nuisance, but here played 
again diplomacy a noble part, taking the 
form of a presentation of a coin of the 



1 6 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

realm, and Bully once more was free to air 
his misery amongst the trappings of 
luxury. And so we reached home and 
Bully was transferred from the many- 
holed cigar box to a burnished cage, in 
full view of a large and merry aviary, in 
order that their liveliness and music might 
cheer his exile and banish his misery. 
And so it was, Bully began to cast off 
his gloom ; he was no longer to be seen 
as a puff-ball on his perch, but a lightly 
skipping fellow full of pleasant ways. 

His tail grew, his breast shone ; he 
changed his ragged cap for one as showy 
and glossy as a beaver. He was now in 
dress parade and full dear to my heart, 
and these colors he could show to as much 
advantage in his yellow cage as his Irish 
namesake could among the hawthorn trees, 
while his performance was to my mind 
superior to the cobbler's pet. And here 
is how I verified this last assertion. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I 7 

One evening as I sat reading the piq- 
uant essays of Hazlitt, I came to a bitter, 
cynical passage which made me put down 
the book to analyze its truth, and to look 
up from an old habit. The canary had 
just finished his song with much bravado ! 
Buffon's chamber musician, from his long 
acquaintance with man, has learned from 
him to play to the gallery. Over my 
head was Bully's cage and from it came that 
martial air, Die Wacht am Rhein^ per- 
fectly piped. I arose and there was Bully, 
the piper, bowing to the right and bowing 
to the left, spreading his tail as dainty as 
my lady's fan. When his piping ceased, 
I gave him a few seeds from my finger- 
tips, and from that day Bully has been 
my martial German piper. 

As I write he sits on the top of a chair 
near my writing desk, and when "Senor/ 
my large yellow-headed parrot will give 
him this invitation, "Sing, Bully, sing," 



1 8 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

there will be martial music in the room. 

Early in my career as a book hunter, 
the most delightful of avocations, I was 
warned by a devotee of thirty years' 
experience to cultivate memory, tact and 
patience, the requisites for success in this 
gentle art. 

"Memory," said the sage, "in order 
that you may not bring home, with laugh- 
ter in your eyes, some closely hugged 
bargain, to find it on your book shelf, a 
bargain of long ago ; tact that you may 
neither irritate the bookseller with useless 
questions, nor minister to his greed by the 
thirst in your eyes, which he reads as 
easily as a doctor tells a pulse ; patience 
which enables you to seek for the book of 
your longings, in the dust of years, amid 
the curios of centuries, on stools, chairs, 
rickety step-ladders, or on any convenience 
that may put the shelves within closer 
range." 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 19 

After I have practised these require- 
ments assiduously, and for years, I cannot 
say that I would pass the sage's examina- 
tion. Was it not a few days ago that I 
brought home in triumph, from a dust 
heap in Montreal, an odd volume of an 
English edition of Browning, to find, to 
my utter disgust and contempt for myself, 
that I had two volumes marked the VII. 

This might argue that the one in pri- 
ority possession of my shelf had been 
unread. Robinson Crusoe reasoned wisely 
from a footprint on the sand that some- 
thing human had passed that way, and 
the blue pencil marking of striking pass- 
ages, rising boldly amidst much jargon, 
was of the same class of proof. The book 
bore a human track, and, on the peculiar- 
ities of the markings, I were easily con- 
victed. Notwithstanding my own lapses, 
I am ready to acclaim the wisdom of my 
old friend's three rules, especially patience, 



20 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

and from practical experience to affirm 
the truth of the old proverb that "Every- 
thing comes to those that wait." And I 
have thrown my belief in this shape. If 
a man lives long enough, he gets even 
with his enemies and knows his friends, 
and that is the acme of patience. I have 
never sought a book save one, Clough's 
Poems, and it may be my bargain any 
day ; my patience is far from exhausted, 
but it did fall into my hands when I least 
expected its coming. And the tale of 
such a book, long prized by me as the 
most notable effort in English of conscious 
purpose and diligent workmanship (I refer 
to Walter Pater's Marias, the Epicurean), 
is inextricably woven with the possession 
of my first chaffinch. 

Pater's exquisite book had long been my 
quest. In my yearly visit to New York I 
had spent days and days in its hunt. "It 
is one of those books," said the bookseller, 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 2 1 

"that rarely remains a day in our shop. 
We have a class of people that call daily 
for such books, and, of course, first come 
first served/' These booksellers never 
permitted me to leave their stores without 
inculcating the maxim of patience, as if 
they knew the irritable nature of most 
book-hunters when clipped of their quarry. 
Braced with his maxim I hastened down 
Eighth Avenue, an old haunt of mine, for 
there, amid smells indescribable, dirt white 
with age, children uncanny and unkempt, 
old clothes of all makes and countries, in 
all sizes and stages of wear, I have found the 
princes of the book world, and entered a 
nook where all these things were in riot, 
the shop (with a stretch of the imagination) 
of a Polish Jew, its owner sprung from a 
race that has suffered. I have a keen 
sense, the gift of heredity, for the suffer- 
ing of others, and it takes but ordinary 
sense to track suffering in the peeking 



22 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

eye and hollow face of a Polish Jew. 
With a greeting in German he at once 
recognized me as an old customer, and 
with the alacrity of his countrymen went at 
once to business. 

"I have/' said he, with a roguish smile, 
laying his flat hand on my shoulder and 
putting his curved nose, that odd mark of 
his race, near my face, "a new barrel of 
books for your inspection. " 

Everything he possessed was for the 
stranger's inspection, and then his sneer or 
his grunt, he knew me better, I thought, 
and his invitation and its matter was so 
framed as to show his kindness, aside 
from any business consideration, and I 
accepted it at its full meaning by diving 
into the barrel without further ceremony, 
bringing this and that dishonored volume 
from its contents. What a place for medi- 
tation on the vanity of talent, and the 
shortness of all immoderate fame ! Here 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 23 

was the poet, novelist, essayist lauded to 
the skies by his friends as one destined to 
live and comfort the succeeding ages, 
consigned to the oblivion of a barrel in 
the home of discarded things. My search 
was not in vain, for to my anxious hands 
came the very book I sought, Pater's vol- 
ume. How it fell in with such company I 
forgot to ask in the joy of my find. 

As I held the book in one hand, and 
fumbled for change with the other, the 
quick Jew divined in my greedy eyes its 
merit, and put upon it a price beyond my 
expectation. As I started to bargain 
with him, the privilege of every book- 
buyer, one of his countrymen entered 
with a little wooden cage in his hands, 
and carelessly set it on a pile of old car- 
pets from whence came the thrice re- 
peated cry of fink, fink, fink, followed in 
a few moments by a delicious song which 
made me forget the rapture of my prize 



24 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

and center my greed on the little cage 
and its occupant, well known to me from 
its first call as a chaffinch, of whose song 
I had heard so much in the Austrian 
Tyrol. 

Having heard the price of the book I 
asked that of the bird, while between the 
venders passed a rapid conversation in 
Yiddish, interesting from its facial gestures, 
and to my vexation found that the price 
of both were beyond my pocket. And I 
was handicapped in further bargaining, for 
I could not do as the boy with the apples 
beyond his reach, belittle them. The 
bird's song was in evidence of his worth, 
and the merit of the book was in my eyes. 
After unsteady reflection there finally 
came to me a hint from a book I had 
read, and the memory of the book was 
from the fancied resemblance of a figure 
therein to that of the birdseller, that a 
Jewish vender was the easiest fellow in 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 25 

the world to strike a bargain with if you 
impress on him your importance and show 
contempt for his goods. The first part 
of the programme I could play, the second 
part, as has been seen, was no longer in 
my hands, and even the first part which 
had worked so well in the Orient, that it 
was given as a recipe in a book of travels, 
was of no avail in New York. 

The Jew had learned the primary of 
democracy, the equality of men, and was 
practising how to handle it with dexterity 
against gentile scorn. I opened the book 
and, for a few minutes, lost myself in the 
music of Pater's prose, and again the bird, 
from the darkness of its little cage, tempt- 
ing me to break its bondage and end so 
sad a captivity, shot through its wooden 
bars a strong, rich, tender strain, his most 
ardent plea to my sympathy. 

How I berated myself for the forget- 
fulness of my purse, whose loss was only 



26 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

felt when I needed it. How I longed for 
a passing friend. How vainly I pleaded 
with the bookseller to buy the bird and 
keep it until my return, thereby earning 
compound interest. Arguments being of 
no avail, after putting Pater in the depths 
of the barrel and covering him up as a 
dog does a bone, that he wishes to 
find on his return, and trusting to luck 
for the possession of the chaffinch, with 
the air and manner of a sulky child I sal- 
lied forth, and made but few steps from 
the store when I met an old friend to 
whom I regaled my woes and desires. 
When he had heard my story he laughed 
right heartily, and making me specify the 
exact place where Pater lay hid, left me 
still spreading all around him his infec- 
tious laughter, and soon returned with both 
bird and book, bought for half the sum 
of a former asking. To my tirade against 
the venders and their dishonest pranks, 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 2J 

he trilled out the full of his cheeks of 
sunny laughter, handed me my cravings, 
finding his money, he said, returned with 
interest, in my happiness, and then, with 
a Shakespeare phrase poised lightly on 
his tongue : 

"How full of briars is this working-day world," 

joined the crowd, while I went home 
light of heart, and more firmly convinced 
of the worth of patience. 

A few days later I bore my chaffinch to 
the North, the cold North, far away from 
his native haunts, the copses, orchards, 
gardens and hedge rows of Old England, 
yet no happier bird dwells in captivity. 

A few months ago, in the summer 
weather, he left his cage, ran the gauntlet 
in a series of rooms, and finally escaped 
to the greenery of a huge maple where he 
sat and sung for hours. But no sooner 
did I open my study window than he flew 



28 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

from his beautiful retreat, through the 
sunshine, to the gloom of my window sill, 
entered most willingly my study and 
sought his seed-dish with the air of one 
who was well satisfied with his actions, 
whose contentment was beyond dispute. 
As he sat pecking and preening, I, setting 
out to moralize on his conduct, was met 
by a phrase from the book that had 
accompanied him to the North : 

''The many," he said, always thus 
emphasizing the difference between the 
many and the few, "are like the people 
heavy with wine, led by children, knowing 
not whither they go;" and yet "much 
learning doth not make wise," and again, 
"the ass after all would have its thistles 
rather than fine gold." 

My bird was of the "many;" would I 
have loved him more had he been of the 
" few? " 

My first recollections of the goldfinch 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 29 

center around my early home ; while other 
recollections are blurred and yearly blot- 
ting out, those of my childhood long 
hidden in some tiny brain cell creep into 
the open, stoled in sadness. All mem- 
ories of vanished days are sorrow crowned. 
My father's house rises before me with the 
giant sycamores in front of it, a wooing 
and nesting place for birds ; inside, close 
pressed to the window, the shaky oblong 
table whereat he used to sit and read aloud 
of gay warriors and bold lovers. And his 
soul was in those books, shooting merrily 
through his gray, Irish eyes. How we 
followed his voice, laughing with keen 
boyish glee as the hero played with advan- 
tage his every caprice ! How the tears 
glistened on our cheeks, when the heroine 
was in the hands of the villain, and how 
our hearts beat as the gallant knight and 
hero with his trusty fellows came canter- 
ing up the road just in time to rescue the 



30 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

fair one and put the villain to death ! 
Among the books he used to read to us 
were Scott's, Dickens', Cooper's. 

The great Thackeray was outside his 
domain; he loved a story that galloped 
along, laughed and cried. To sit down 
and reason with an author was beyond his 
might. He could weep over Little Nell, 
but a Becky Sharp he could not under- 
stand. And I have no regrets that I was 
coddled on the literature he loved, for I 
am bold enough to put forth, even at the 
risk of being called a heretic, the opinion 
that if all our juvenile literature was lost, 
it would matter little. And my ground 
for this opinion is that the old masters of 
English fiction and poetry constitute by 
far the best reading for boys and girls. 

There is a manliness in their pages, a 
human pulse, a heart throb, that is 
inspiring to youth. Their characters 
have the life-like touch, become real to 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 3 I 

youth, enter his very system and ever after 
continue a part of him. Noisy criticism 
may tell him that Dickens' characters are 
mere puppets, that can never be met with 
in human life; that Dickens was a vulgar 
and conceited coxcomb, that his politics 
and sociology are eccentric and foolish, 
his style turgid, the whole man and his 
work a bore, but what man can patiently 
listen to such charges who, as a boy, read 
Pickwick, fresh in his memory that group 
of " immortal grotesques " marshalled 
under Weller. 

When I hear Cooper called a creator of 
wooden figures, the Cooper of my boy- 
hood, I have an irresistible desire to take 
up the bucklers in memory of those de- 
licious nights when my father read to us 
those marvellous tales of land and sea, 
adding so much to youth's delightful 
domain. My father's reading of one of 
those tales, and my first remembrance of 



32 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

a goldfinch, are indelibly blended together. 
Above the oblong table, almost touching 
my father's head, when he was seated for 
his evening's ramble in fancy land, hung 
the goldfinch's cage. The bird was, ac- 
cording to him, an exceptional one; my 
father was of that peculiar, Celtic type, 
who must idealize all they love. Thik 
bird was, if memory plays me no tricks, a 
cheveral, known to the eye of the initiated 
bv a white spot, about the size of a pea, 
under the throat. This marking gave him 
power over song far beyond his ordinary 
confreres, made him a star, and the object 
of attention in the locality he frequented. 
Now this particular goldfinch happened 
to make its first appearance in my father's 
birthplace, where his sweet, wild notes 
and his jaunty bearing made him a prize 
for all the bird-fanciers, and, finally, taken 
on a bird-lime twig, after escaping lures 
for months, he crossed the ocean as a 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 33 

tribute of friendship "from those at home, 
to the exile far away." And the love of 
the Irish exile for this link with his native 
land was most touching. 

When the bird began to sing, and he 
sang by gaslight as well as by sunlight, 
the exile, though thirty years had fled 
since his boyhood home faded from his 
view, shut the book he was reading, and 
on fancy's golden wings flew to the scene 
of his youth, the haunts of his love, by the 
merry magic of a goldfinch's songs. 

It was during one of these reveries that 
my impatience caused the death of the 
beloved pet; a night of dark sorrow to 
my childish heart, and my father's stern 
displeasure, and the tale is soon told. 

My father was reading the Deer-slayer, 
with our feelings high keyed : 

"As she moved by the tree that hid 
Chingachgook and his friend, the former 
felt for his tomahawk." Now we listened 



34 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

for the scene which was already grouping 
the figures in our childish brain. Just 
then the goldfinch burst forth in song and, 
as he did so, my father stopped his reading 
to listen, while I, impetuous and burning 
with eagerness to hear if the book scene 
tallied with that which held my mind, 
could brook no such interruption, so rising 
on my tip toes, I struck the bird-cage 
violently, snapping the hook that held it 
to the wall. 

Down it came, first on the table, then 
heavily on the floor. My last sight of 
the goldfinch, and that stolen over my 
shoulder, as I clambered heart-broken up 
the stairs to my dark room, peopled ahead 
by my fancy with all kinds of monsters, 
was lying in the soft palm of the exile's 
hand fluttering in death, gently stroked, 
lovingly caressed. That night with its 
strange sounds, its processions of fairies 
and ghosts, speaking cats, cantering 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 35 

horses, and devil-eyed dogs, far from mak- 
ing me register vengeance and dislike 
against all birds, and the goldfinch in par- 
ticular, begot a love that even to this day 
makes me hang around a bird shop with 
positive enthusiasm. And no lover of 
Nature may apologize for such an enthusi- 
asm. 

My next sight of a goldfinch was under 
the blue Italian sky lit up by a soft but 
brilliant sunlight. Goldie was flitting 
from thistle top to thistle top, as light and 
airy as its swaying down. When he 
settled for a moment, enticed by some 
rare tid-bit, how that soft sunlight fell 
upon his fine, crimson head, glistening the 
black which stoled it, and adding a softer 
shade to his little brown back. What 
antics he played, this pretty little gymnast, 
on the ready-made swings and burs of the 
thistle tree, and when he went away how 
my heart went after him ; but away he 



36 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

went, naught of care to burden his golden 

wings. 

Was such a flight in Pushkin's mind 

when he wrote : 

"Men are wearied, men are grieved, 
But birdie flies into distant lands, 
Into warm climes, beyond the blue seas ; 
Flies away until the spring." 

Was it then I vowed to possess a gold- 
finch, to shut him up in a wooden cage 
like Stearne's captive starling, where he 
could not get out, to rob him of his thistle- 
down and sunlight and do these things 
with an air of satisfaction under the guise 
of my love for birds, a trick much alike to 
those done by men to their fellow men 
under the guise of that ample mantle, 
humanity? But be it here written these 
reflections are penned in the presence of 
Goldie. It is a fitting case for Shake- 
speare's saying, 

"After execution, judgment hath 
Repented o'er his doom." 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 37 

After teaching Goldie to be a slave by- 
giving him the greatest of luxuries, the 
love of ease with dignity (he has now 
a golden cage), I open his cage door and 
the windows wide, and when he refuses 
to be free, I compliment him on his intel- 
ligence. And this is all so human ! 

As I shut the window, I call this slavery- 
love, and having had him to perch on my 
finger for his price, he proudly surveys the 
room, the envy of all the birds, and turn- 
ing his little head in their direction ad- 
dressing them in a quick, soft voice, tells 
them what a great bird he is, and how he 
possesses his master's confidence, and 
doubtless many other things, for I know 
but imperfectly his speech. 

Goldie and I have been mimicking 
man and playing at history. 

It was while travelling in company 
with a young doctor in one of the most 
romantic parts of the Scottish Highlands, 



38 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

that I heard for the first time the flute-like 
song of the linnet. The little musician 
peeped from out the golden furze, his red 
head watching our approach, but too in- 
dolent, on that fine summer day, to fly off. 
Or was it that he divined we were lovers 
of nature, from whom he had a right to 
expect whole-souled comradeship? Be 
this as it may, he became bolder from our 
advance, spread his wings as if to prepare 
for flight, laughed at our idle suspicions, 
hopped about the furze with a satisfying 
air of safety, and finally mounted his pul- 
pit, the highest and most gorgeous limb 
of the tree, and piped a lay worthy of the 
attention of the old god, Pan. We had 
found a seat in the shape of a huge boul- 
der, a side of which was worn low by 
nature, and making no inconvenient 
benches, I had better say chairs, for the 
formation was more of that aspect, and 
comfortably seated there in full view of 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 39 

the musician, out of the sun's blinding 
rays, snuffing the scent of the mountain 
flowers, ravishing our eyes on their lordly 
beauty, we listened to our Scottish piper 
while he exercised his heavenly gift. In 
the intervals of his song my friend quoted 
snatches from the poets without comment, 
showing their appreciation of this master- 
ful singer. And he was worthy of their 
thought. As their fine sayings fell from 
my companion's mouth, I thought how 
often had Burns, whose heart was in the 
Highlands, witnessed such a scene, and 
who among the poets more worthy of a 
lintie's song than he who wrote : 

u Or, if man's superior might 
Dare invade your native right, 
On the lofty ether borne, 
Man with all his powers you scorn ; 
Swiftly seek, on clanging wings, 
Other lakes and other springs ; 
And the foe you cannot brave, 
Scorn at least to be his slave." 



40 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

This was the bird who had piped his 
way through Scottish song, making his 
name treasured in each Scottish home— 
the bird that had rallied the drooping 
spirit of Ferguson and cheered the lonely- 
watch of the Ettrick shepherd, Scotland's 
royal bird. He is a part of the landscape ; 
wherever you travel, he is there, bird of 
the chieftain and cotter, in 

"Russet lawns and fallows gray, 
Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 
Mountains on whose barren breast 
The laboring clouds do often rest, 
Meadows trim with daisies pied, 
Shallow brooks and rivers wide." 

All over Scotia's fair land is heard the 
lintie's song. Much as I loved his song, 
and were it in my power to make him my 
captive I could not have done so, I could 
not have robbed the landscape of his 
presence, robbed the furze of that which 
was its crown. So we sat, two wanderers 
from a far off land, from the land that the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 41 

Scottish poet thought of when his fortunes 
were low, until our piper was joined by 
his "guid wife," and then, as was our duty, 
we left the loving pair to their domestic 
felicity, and turned our steps toward the 
town. Since that lovely summer's day I 
have met the lintie caged in many a clime, 
in the poor man's cabin, in the rich man's 
home, pouring out, irrespective of class, 
his unpremeditated lay, but it ever lacked 
that wild freedom, that untrammelled trill 
which won my heart in the Scottish High- 
lands. 

Despite Lovelace's pretty verses, iron 
bars have a subduing effect on both man 
and bird. My first linnet, (the pretty fel- 
low seems to know that I am writing 
about him, for he lazily mounts the pine 
limb that I have placed in my study at 
his disposal to silence the petulance of a 
goldfinch who is darting through the room 
with a swift chirrup,) was given to me by 



42 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

a Scotchman, and the giver of this and 
many other favors lies close to my heart. 
Of him, here is a tale told me by an ani- 
mal importer as we leaned against a 
monkey's cage. "When Sandy landed 
with his wife and two children on our 
shore he had but little money, yet on the 
very day of his landing, and out of his 
small store, he purchased from me a lark. 
'Just,' as he said, 'to make a bit of music 
in the house when Maggie and the bairns 
were lonesome for home.' I found out 
that Sandy had no employment, and was 
not likely to have any for some time, and 
noting the man's love for birds, I at once 
engaged him to peddle them, and from 
that little beginning, Sandy, with thrift 
and honesty, worked his way to his own 
shop, his heart's delight, where he can 
discourse by the hour to the gentle lovers 
of birds on his pleasant and profitable 
hobby." 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 43 

I have been a customer of Sandy's for 
years. When in New York, I spent not a 
little of my time there, for his shop is after 
my liking, an arena where you can throw 
your ideas, providing you have the cour- 
age to get after them and be a knight in 
their defence, for the place is full of Sir 
Knights ready to pounce upon them, that, 
were you not there to offer protection, 
they would be daggered to death, and I 
take it as a compliment, that the thrifty 
owner of such a shop should ship and 
send to me as a Christmas gift "the best 
linnet he ever handled," with a long card 
of philosophical observations, proving 
thereby his right to his nation. Later 
there came a letter telling me that he had 
long wished to make me a "present," but 
as I "had heretofore no home he had to 
wait for the day I had," and he shrewdly 
remarked, as if to temper his truth for my 
palate, that "if you have not a house of 



44 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

your own, you have no use for pets." 
The value of another man's thought is en- 
hanced if it has had practical illustrations 
in your own life, and Sandy's little tem- 
pering had, as I will now disclose. 

Some years ago I lived in a house as a 
subordinate. I had, near the garret, two 
little rooms, one I used as a bedroom, the 
other, as a study, where, on a mere pit- 
tance of a salary, I had collected a few 
precious books by a weekly hunt in the 
old bookshops. On one of these hunts I 
met an Irish sailor peddling a few bedrag- 
gled parrots in a grimy cage. It was easy 
to fall into conversation with him, as he 
played his tongue with all the vanity of a 
child. He had no time for thought with 
this outlet ever open. Start the conver- 
sation where you would, it came with a 
rush to the thing that most concerned him 
just then, the selling of his Pollys, which 
he forced on me with bantering persis- 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 45 

tence. When I told him, to use an Irish 
phrase, of the "awkwardness of my pre- 
dicament," and the wrath that might 
await the introduction into a peaceable 
house of a screeching Polly, he at once 
agreed with me, and abandoned his argu- 
ment in the bird's defence, but it was only 
to spring another more plausible and 
much more taking. 

He was not only a smuggler of parrots, 
but of smaller birds, and had nearby a 
choice collection of over a dozen that he 
would, driven by poverty, sell for almost 
nothing, so handing me his parrots, a 
proceeding which caught my sympathy, 
he started on a trot, and soon returned 
with his birds, canaries, goldfinches and 
Indigos, and the price he spoke hurried 
my hand to my pocket. The delight with 
which I carried them home was akin to 
that which I felt when I saw my name in 
print for the first time, emotions beyond 



46 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

analysis. They were mine, I thought, a 
treasure that I had not in my wildest 
dreams of bird possession dreamt of, fallen 
into my hands by sheer luck. 

I carried them home much in the man- 
ner of a child carrying his first toy, 
oblivious of all but them. 

When I reached the house, instead of 
at once going to my own abode, I was so 
overcome with pride that I carried my 
pets from room to room, noisy on their 
merits, yet grieved as I read contempt in 
the eyes of those where I had sought but 
welcome. 

I learned later that all this was very 
human, so I hung up my birds in the sun- 
shine, and for months relished their songs, 
songs that made my little quarters be- 
loved. Some one, however, is always 
found to destroy our likings, men of little 
minds and stony hearts. My superior, 
on a cold Christmas morn, when his heart 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 47 

should have overflown with charity, com- 
missioned a silly servant to open wide the 
cage doors and then the windows, and my 
pets that gave no annoyance, whose songs 
were my solace, in seeking their liberty 
found death. 

I have often tried to banish from my 
brain this cruel man's face, whose little 
sovereignty has long passed away, but 
memory holds him as in a vise, and puts 
him on her stage at the most unlooked-for 
moments. She brackets him with the 
songs of birds and the villains of books. 
She can fit him to her whole range of dis- 
taste. But you, my linnet, may have no 
fear, sing on thy pine spray, make me 
dream of other lands. No cruel hands 
will give you, little exile, the liberty which 
is death. After years of wandering, your 
master has a little home where Sandy's 
gracious gift may dwell in sunshine and 
peace. 



48 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

I had been but a few days in the Adir- 
ondack^, just long enough to assort my 
room and to fashion with my own hands 
a sign of vast proportions telling to my 
neighbors that I was a physician, both by 
day and by night at their service, when a 
little incident happened that ministered to 
my pleasure all the years I spent in the 
wilderness. I had brought to the moun- 
tains a broken down constitution, a few 
articles of my profession, a scanty pocket 
book, and a few books, mostly French. 
Now my love for this language was purely 
utilitarian. I was located in a French 
Canadian settlement, and I thought that 
it would be pleasant for them, and no bad 
thing for me, if I could address them in 
their native speech. For one's native 
tongue has always a charm even from the 
mouth of an indifferent performer. The 
books were then to be a kind of target 
practise, by which I was ultimately to 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 49 

bore my way to the heart of the commu- 
nity. I had a faded, well-thumbed and 
much worn copy of MoliereXhak had done 
duty in many climes since I first picked 
it from M. Grabousky's dust heap, Paul 
et Virgmie, decorated with a series of 
blue pencillings, done in the days of 
sentiment and love's young untethered 
imaginings, and De Matsti'e's Voyage 
Around My 7?oom, a little book which I 
had not then read, but which was brought 
along for its title, an adhesion to the old 
fallacy so often speared by the moralists 
of buying a book from its covers. It is a 
saying, "Read a book before you judge 
it," but I am one of those who seeing a 
title imagine the contents, and following 
this oddity, here is the way I reasoned. 
I am a young physician going to the 
Adirondacks for a double purpose, to 
seek health while helping others to find 
that boon. I shall be confined to my 



50 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

room through my own indisposition, 
through waiting to heal the indisposition 
of others, through mountain storms and 
through that delightful feeling so strongly 
taught by the Chinese philosopher, Lao 
Tse, whose name in philosophy I know 
not, but which^arises from a disinclination 
to move, and to whose attacks I was 
especially prone in my younger days, so 
said I to my sister as she packed my 
trunk, "Put De Maistre's in. You know 
there is no society where I am going, and 
that a great part of my time must needs 
be spent in my room, and this book may 
teach me how to spend it usefully. Per- 
haps I may send you a voyage some 
day." 

My sister, who was well aware of my 
fondness for the teaching of the dolcefar 
niente of the Chinese philosopher, laughed 
heartily at this bit of imagination. 

Now it is hinted in this book that there 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 5 I 

are in the world many curious persons, 
perhaps among them some of my readers, 
who fain would know if the book was of 
service to me, and to them 'I frankly 
answer no. It was charming reading, 
but the Frenchman's atmosphere and 
mine were different; besides in the moun- 
tains I had learned a better philosophy 
than any I hitherto knew, a philosophy 
which sent me to nature and kept me in 
the bracing air, rambling amid valley and 
highland, in sunshine and in storm. 

The reading of this book was the cause 
of the incident which will be found some- 
where in this paper. Adjoining my room 
Was a large meadow dotted with hillocks 
that stretched to the river's brim. Many 
of these hillocks were surmounted by 
lordly maples, trees whose magnificent 
foliage filled the eye with beauty, and the 
ear with song. 

For here came early the robin, choicest 



52 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

of nature's warblers, with a heart of love 
and a mouth of music to woo a teasing 
mate and build a nest in the cool greenery 
of the leaves. Oh, bird of my Northland, 
what memories your song must ever 
awake within me, memories that cling to 
a vanished past ! 

One of those hillocks, famed for a huge 
maple, was a favorite resting place of mine, 
and my attachment arose from a robin's 
song. From the bare and topmost twig of 
the great tree this masterly singer, whose 
clear voice and compass of song I have 
never heard equalled, greeted the first 
speck of the morning sun and bade fare- 
well to the dying day. Before my com- 
ing he had established his power to the 
distance of his voice, for when he sang, 
as if in reverence to his genius, his 
brother musicians were mute. To the. 
trunk of his maple I had built a rustic 
arm chair, and further up a tiny little 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. S3 

platform whereon I could put his favorite 
food, thereby seeking to win his friend- 
ship and give him more leisure for song. 
And the fine fellow seemed to divine my 
intention the moment my project was 
executed, for rising from the maple 
spray with an exquisite burst of song, in 
graceful curves, he pirouted toward the 
platform and helped himself to a quiver- 
ing worm that in efforts to escape attracted 
his keen eye. The rustic chair built, and 
the platform erected, my musician ever 
at my behest, and the most delightful 
scenery all around me, there could be no 
cause for complaint in those early days 
of my Adirondack life. If patients were 
slow in detecting my worth as a physician, 
it was the ordinary way and nothing to 
be alarmed about. 

Old practitioners had warned me of the 
length of years and patience it took to 
build up a practice, and that in medicine, 



54 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

genius and youth were no match for talent 
and age. In our profession, and a few 
others, we hear much about experience, 
as if it were a thing of years instead of 
opportunity. And of opportunity, Bu- 
chanan, a Scotch poet, gave this sage 
advice which few of us heed : 

u Grasp Opportunity, that, passing by 

On the sheet lightning with a moment's flash 
Haunts us forever with its meteor eye !" 

My way of grasping opportunity in 
those days was in sitting in my rustic 
bench, in the maple's shade, reading, and 
my first book done there was De Maistre's^ 
and hear how it is inwoven with a robin's 
memory. 

I had sought the shade of my maple 
from the garish blaze of the noonday sun. 
All around me was at rest, as if nature was 
taking a little siesta to give her strength 
for the toil of a summer's day. I slipped 
into my seat and glanced into my little 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 55 

book as a preparation for my afternoon 
nod. I read, "Nature, indifferent to the 
fate of individuals, dons her brilliant spring 
robes, and decks herself in all her beauty, 
near the cemetery where he rests." I 
read no further for the thought took 
possession of my mind, and started my 
imagination on the gallop, until I found 
escape from its shadows in sleep. And from 
this delightful sleep, the sleep of careless, 
happy youth and untroubled brain, I was 
summarily aroused by a gunshot, and the 
noise was so strange, and so out of 
relation with my sylvan retreat that my 
awakening was an indescribable jar of 
those feelings of ill-omen that seem to 
foreshadow pain. 

In front of me stood a grinning urchin, 
ragged and unkempt, with a century of 
cruelty peeping from his eyes, and puck- 
ering his face, and in his hand he held 
triumphant my bleeding, fluttering mu- 



56 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

sician, the happy fellow of an hour ago* 
Amistcame over my eyes and grief awoke 
anger in my heart, which the urchin quickly 
translated into flight, throwing, in his fear 
and with a cruelty that was inborn, 
my warbler to the ground, where he lay 
staining the soft grass with his blood. 
"Poor little bird !" said I, as I picked him 
up and stemmed the gaping wound, 
"man's inhumanity is not alone confined 
to his fellows ; it has made his presence a 
menace in the whole domain of animal 
nature. Those who are his slaves obey 
him in fear rather than in love." 

Having in thuswise moralized to free 
my mind, I carried my unwilling captive 
to the house, amputated his shattered leg, 
laid him in a padded box, and became 
his dutiful nurse. At first my exertions 
on his behalf seemed to be but useless 
annoyance, but patience, that gift so indis- 
pensable to the lover of nature, not only 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 57 

conquered all repugnance to my attentions, 
but begot a comradeship on hispart which 
continued until his tragic death. He was 
my first patient, and it is with some degree 
of pride I write that my treatment was 
successful. Dick was soon able to leave 
his box and limp around my room. 

In the following spring, he repaid my 
love, for of trouble I had none, by filling 
my little home with his varied melody. 
Perched on the bed-post his song became 
the most reasonable and musical of alarm 
clocks. Once I carried him to the maple 
tree, the scene of his triumphs, in hopes 
that he might once again seek his seat, 
but the tree held ghosts, and no coaxing 
could make my little cripple enter its 
greenery, no song would he sing again 
amid its branches. I had not the heart 
to repeat the experiment. 

So Dick and I became dearer to each 
other with the years, and he might still 



58 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

have been with me in my new home hold- 
ing first place in his tribe had it not 
been that in the goodness of my heart 
I admitted, on a stormy winter's night, a 
neighbor's half-famished cat to my dwell- 
ing, whose piteous appeals for mercy 
smote my heart. On the morrow no robin 
came to my call, no songster's notes 
made my dwelling merry. The ungrate- 
ful beast had eaten mybird — yes, "Nature 
is indifferent to individuals." The French 
writer's phrase was applicable enough to 
weave in any memory of Dick. Since 
those days I have reared from the nest 
many robbins, robins taken from young 
marauders, and there have been among 
them not a few fine songsters, but some- 
how their notes lacked that which made 
Dick's so deliciously satisfying. A friend 
who prides himself on his philosophical 
attachments declares, with all the arro- 
gance of his class, that the robin which 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 59 

hangs now in my study piping as blithely 
this fine December morn, as if it were a 
spring day, and the buds breaking into 
laughter all around him, sings as well as 
my lost favorite, that the difference is not 
in the song, but in my mind, and that this 
is owing to a lack of memory and a sur- 
plus of imagination. 

" You are an idealist," quoth he, "always 
putting tinsel on the past." And might 
I not well accuse him and his tribe of doing: 
a similar work? For what is philosophy 
at most butthe continual dressing of a few 
ancient ideas to the fancies of the age f 
For when I go to Browne for his new- 
panacea, lo ! I find in his preface a salaam 
to the memory of some old Greek or 
Latin master. 

It was at a place called Convent 
Station, situated on the banks of the Missis- 
sippi, at a point where the view of that 
stream is truly superb, that I first became 



60 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

acquainted with the nonpareil, as hand- 
some and companionable a mate as the 
bird tribe can give to man. 

Convent Station, the name, as I sup- 
pose, from a convent within easy distance, 
is a little stopping place in Louisiana that 
could by no stretch of the imagination be 
dignified as a town. Here I came one 
afternoon of a beautiful August day, my 
wandering spirit seeking rest, for in those 
days I dreamed, as Ponce, that rest flowed 
from some hidden fountain, and having to 
wait for a stage to carry me further in- 
land, I passed my time with a Northern 
telegraph operator, whose home was both 
cosy and novel. He was a handy man 
and a cheerful one, and these qualities are 
of great value to a bachelor as was my 
friend. He was a great lover of nature, 
and, as he told me, instead of boarding 
with some family of the vicinity, and suf- 
fering their peculiarities, he had asked for 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 6l 

and obtained an old and unused freight 
car, which, under his touch, had become 
the pretty quarters that his courtesy 
placed at my disposal. One part of his 
dwelling was occupied by a large cage, 
his own handicraft, containing a couple of 
dozen nonpareils, and a prettier bird-sight 
I have not witnessed. The cage was so 
placed that the sunshine filled it with 
golden light and lit up the motley colors of 
the gay throng that flitted in its joys. 
And that the reader may the better grasp 
this little Southern picture, let me draw a 
nonpareil as he sits now, with gracious 
mien, on the edge of my waste-basket this 
cold, winter night, begging a fly that has 
been bottled for his winter comfort, and 
for which he gives grace in a soft, plain- 
tive, little warble, fitted to the landscape 
of his sunny South land, but hardly to my 
bleak, cold North land. 

His head is violet-hued, his neck of the 



62 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

same soft, showy color, the upper part of 
liis back of a green yellow, the lower part 
of a bright red. The under part of his 
body, throat and chest are of a red also, 
-but a shade darker than that of the lower 
part of his body. He is always in motion, 
which is dictated by a beauty and grace 
admirably fitted to give adequate expres- 
sion to his coloring. 

And now that you may have the picture 
before you of two dozen little charmers 
flitting and warbling in the sunlight, and 
that of my own delight on the edge of my 
waste basket, let me tell you how this 
Northern exile amused himself in the long 
tedious years of his stay. One of his 
amusements was the keeping of birds and 
their taming to a degree that I have never 
since seen excelled, and all the means he 
had to work with, as he laughingly de- 
clared, "was with that old instrument, 
kindness," on which saying I reminded 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 63 

him he could use none better. Such suc- 
cess he had that I verily believe had he 
turned his magnificent collection loose 
that they would have sought him and 
captivity, so well had he gained their con- 
fidence. And to do this, I confess, is no 
easy thing, despite the fine spun tales in 
bird books so tempting to youth for a like 
conquest, so bitterly remembered in our 
failures. My acquaintance was a great 
lover of Thoreau, a man, strange to say, 
whose status is still in dispute with fireside 
critics. 

Not so, however, with those who live 
with nature, love her, and listen to her 
tales. To them he is one of nature's 
searching masters, whose vision penetrates 
her secrets, whose love unlocks her most 
hidden alcoves, whose speech is her 
tongue. Of all Thoreau's books, and he 
had most of them, he loved Walden, 
which he had in a little sacred niche above 



64 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

his hammock and within easy reach of his 
hand. I can shut my eyes and see in the 
dark, to this day, that niche and the two 
little blue-bound volumes of Walden, and 
in the dark comes back to me his voice, 
reading what he pressed me to admit as 
the best part of the book, The Ponds. 
Was it from knowledge or the sake of 
argument that I hesitated to throw him a 
bit of comfort? Such then were his 
amusements, birds and books, and none 
could give, at so little cost, so much 
enjoyment. It was the memory of this man 
and his pretty charmers that aroused my 
desires, as soon as I possessed a home of 
my own, to own a nonpareil, and hang 
him in the sunlight to witness his antics 
and color showing. And here is how my 
friend, to whom you have been intro- 
duced, came into my keeping. I was 
walking one night on Eighth Avenue, 
New York, when in front of a large shoe 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 6$ 

store stood a bird-seller with a few birds, 
the most miserable set I have seen in any 
market. They were curled up, their 
heads burrowed in the feathers of their 
back, their tails partly erect. The bird- 
seller seemed to be thoroughly ashamed 
of their wretched condition. Noting my 
interest in the little captives, and heartily 
glad to get rid of them at any price, he 
commenced to bargain with the born in- 
stinct of his kind. A peddler is born, 
not made. I had not spoken with him, 
nor was it needful for me to do so, while 
his cunning gray eyes were riveted on 
mine, gleaning thereby all the information 
he needed. "They are lovely birds, choice 
singers, " said the pedler ; "just now they 
look a little ragged, but all they want, to be 
as good as any of their kind, is seed, water 
and warmth. Birds are like men," con- 
tinued the moralizing pedler, "if they don't 
have the things they need, how can you 



66 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

expect them to be, to look and act right? 
Feed me well and rig me up like a gentle- 
man, and I warrant that I will do honor to 
my expenses. Put these birds in fine 
cages, for you can do it," said he with a 
sneer on his face, "feed them well and, 
on my honor, in a few months you can 
tell your friends that you bought them 
from Donald Burns. " The scamp seemed 
pleased with his speech, but I had no 
mind to compliment him on its effect. 
With the aid of a few wretched birds he 
was pleading his own miserable self and 
the grudge of his tribe against those 
better equipped for the battle of life. 
Democracy taught him he was the equal 
of all men, his life told him that the jade 
was a romancer, who was continually 
holding as facts what history had proved 
to be turbulent imaginings, and to which 
verdict his own life in its experiences of 
them must accord. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 6j 

His price, thrown out of his mouth at 
random, driven by poverty, was so mod- 
est, a mere song, as we say, that I entered 
into no dicker with him, for my heart 
would have repressed such a shabby deal- 
ing, but gave him, with a willingness that 
must have been evident, more than his de- 
mand. He accepted it without thanks ; he 
had become in the hard fight of life cold 
and indifferent, society had developed the 
beast and crushed the man. "With his 
birds," said a friend, "there can be no 
luck, for with them came no kind words." 
So much does the human heart pant for 
kindness, that when things come under 
any other cover we doubt the worth of the 
gift. But why tax him for his manner, 
drove into him by his brothers? The 
teachers of inhumanity are men. 

To the poor birds my kindness came, 
with a single exception, too late. The 
nonpareil alone survived, and in the moult 



68 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

discarded his old coat and sluggish ways. 
I gave him a new cage with a swing, and 
a window facing the sun. There he for- 
got his past misery, and taken with the 
beauty of his surroundings, he added to 
it with his plumage and frolic on the 
swing. I opened his cage one fine sum- 
mer's day, and after much thought he 
decided to come and test his wings around 
my room. Seeing that he returned to his 
cage in good season, I took the door off 
and left him to his whims. 

As soon as I entered my study in the 
morning he would invariably leave his 
cage and come in my way, but not close 
enough to commence a comradeship with 
him, and the summer passed in this way. 
During the day his chief amusement was 
catching flies, and I have often been cap- 
tivated by his dexterity and grace in what, 
from experience, I call a difficult art. 
Summer gone and his sport ended, he 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 69 

came closer to my desk and finally lit on 
the edge of my waste-basket, and to my 
utter astonishment broke into melody. 
For his song, and to tempt him to easier 
intimacy, I put on my desk a large spider 
and continued my writing. His quick 
eye caught his favorite dish, and without 
any ado he hopped on my desk, went at 
once to business by striking the spider a 
well-directed blow on the head which 
paralyzed the animal completely. This 
done he gave a hop in triumph, and a low 
cry of victory, and seizing the spider ate 
him in a well-bred manner. From that 
moment our companionship has been in- 
separable. He bids me good morning in 
a quiet sort of way when I enter my room, 
and I, in a boisterous sort of way, (for I 
have never expelled the boy out of me), 
bid him good night. 

When I seek a book in the library, he 
follows me from case to case, flits to my 



70 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

shoulder, jumps on my head, and acts in 
a manner thoroughly in keeping with my 
tastes. He objects to visitors entering my 
study, and I have learned, after losing, to 
whomsoever took them, over twenty vol- 
umes, that there is method in my nonpa- 
reil's fine frenzy. It was a saying of my 
old friend, Colonel Johnston, that every 
man should have some nook in the house 
sacred to himself, and mine shall be my 
study with its birds, books, flowers and 
pictures, and no more my little bird shall 
your frenzy arise from the entrance of the 
idle and curious. Two is company, three 
a bore to man, bird and beast. 

I was reading a few days ago, a criti- 
cism of Leigh Hunt, an old favorite of 
mine, and the reading, rousing my stag- 
nant memory, brought once more into 
light, long lost memories. But a word 
with the critic, for it is not manly to hear 
3^our friend's reputation assailed and be 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 7 1 

dumb. The critic assures us, with evident 
satisfaction, that my fanciful poet and my 
kindly-seeing essayist, whose healthful 
thought wears such an admirable garb, 
has had his day, that readers no longer 
owe him a spare moment. 

What cocksureness does this age not 
show in criticism ! Leigh Hunt dead, not 
a great writer to be sure, Mr. Critic, but 
as charming and sane a fellow as ever 
took hold of a pen, or carried in his 
pocket a note book. His eyes, it is also 
true, were not on the skies, they were on 
earth, and what writer has used them with 
better effect, or drew more beauty out of 
common things? 

Leigh Hunt is dead, the sunniest-vis- 
ioned man in English literature, the 
happy-hearted lounger among English 
meadows, music-laden hedgerows, babbling 
brooks, lazy villages, enchanted castles 
and jolly inns. Be it so, then, I mourn 



72 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

not for the poet but the age that can feel 
no love for his legacy. Why should I 
blame the age at a critic's nod, and the 
huge book of literature lying before me, 
telling how viciously they lie, and espe- 
cially when they judge those who have 
followed the same literary pursuits, which 
they, in divers ways, maintain that they 
adorn. Is not Pliny's suave dictum when 
writing to his friend Priscus, that Martial's 
poems "will not survive their author," my 
warning ! But the poet who wrote them, 
in expectation of their doing so, gave to 
mankind and not to a clique the guardian- 
ship of his fame. 

No single man carries the world on his 
shoulders. And of mankind I have too 
good an opinion to admit that it will 
willingly let die aught that can cheer the 
individual, and with it I leave my favor- 
ite, my spirit at peace, for a memory that 
came with his honored name. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 73 

In Louisville there was, a few years ago, 
an old bookstore of wondrous mien. It 
was merely a long passage, not more than 
six feet at its greatest width. Its height, 
I have heard frequenters aver, was twenty 
feet, if not more : on this matter I am no 
authority. It was filled with books, from 
floor to ceiling, leaving scarce a passage 
for the purchaser, whose fear was ever of 
a huge heap tumbling on his head, so reck- 
lessly were they piled. I know of no 
bookstore in the whole range of my expe- 
rience, where a buyer was more at his ease. 
The owner gave him no suggestions but 
left him to his own sweet will, whether or 
not that will led him to pull from its place 
one book or a thousand. As he said to 
me once, on my apologizing for the fall 
of a corner of books, produced by my de- 
sire to own a large copy of Massinger, 
which copy was the corner's prop, ''Don't 
mind a little thing like that, go on and 



74 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

make your selection ; my books are to be 
seen and to be handled, a toss and a 
tumble now and then will do them good. 
Every fall shows a new face." I at once 
discerned the truth of the bookman's 
thought, for there stood a long, hidden 
row of old English classics, that would 
have brought warmth to the heart of 
Charles Lamb. The only time in my life 
that I wished for money was on such oc- 
casions. In rummaging the fallen pile I 
came across a coatless, nameless fellow, 
torn and scratched, burnt in a few places, 
altogether as disreputable a specimen of 
the book world as the eye could see. I 
had, however, to read but a few pages to 
discern the value of this ragged chieftain, 
and once again to be reminded it is heart 
and not clothes that make the man. As the 
bookseller handed me my carelessly done 
up purchase he said, with a quip in his 
eye, "If you are going out of the city put 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 75 

that book in your pocket," referring to the 
raggy fellow in my hand, "you will find 
that he has something to say. Yes, 
Leigh Hunt is worth pocket room on any 
journey." Now my journey led me to a 
college wherein two of the most miserable 
years of my life were spent in parrot 
phrasing Latin and in learning, that has 
been a disadvantage instead of a use to 
me. The only good I lay to the place 
was the little start it gave me in German. 
Once a week I had a leave of absence for 
a couple of hours, and, while other stud- 
ents spent this time in various exercises, 
I sought the woods with Leigh Hunt in 
my breast, and under the guise of going 
for a walk betook myself to a little brook 
where birds came for a drink and repaid 
the debt with a song. 

It was while lying beneath the shade of 
a bunchy, white-flowering shrub, whose 
perfume made one drowsy, watching the 



j6 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

sun-effects on the great, round, white and 
orange pond lilies, that languidly nodded 
to the passing stream, that a little blue 
bird shot through the bloom of the shrub- 
bery, past the white and gold of the lilies 
and rested across the brook in a clump of 
dogwood blossoms, shading his brightness 
in their blend of dark green and pure 
white. He had aroused my mind in the 
same manner as some new plaything 
arouses that of a child to center all its 
thoughts for a time on the object of its 
liking. I could not cross the stream, so I 
awaited his leisure, and to do so the more 
easily I pulled the book from my breast 
and commenced reading where I had, on 
a former visit, left off. "Few people, 
rich or poor," the essayist was saying, 
"make the most of what they possess. In 
their anxiety to increase the amount of 
the means for the future enjoyment, they 
are too apt to lose sight of the capability 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. JJ 

of them for present. Above all they 
overlook the thousand helps to enjoy- 
ment which lie around about them, free 
to everybody and obtainable by the very 
willingness to be pleased, assisted by that 
fancy and imagination which Nature has 
bestowed more or less upon all human 
beings/' I was about to begin a new 
sentence when from over my head came 
a soft, dripping song, as if the perfume 
had taken to speech. I became motion- 
less and peered amid leaf and flower for 
the singer. Soon my well-trained eye 
found his perch on the highest spray of 
the shrub. It was my violet blue bird 
that, startled by my coming, had returned 
to his favorite retreat. Putting the book 
in my breast I noiselessly crept into the 
open grass where my view was complete 
and my watch unnoticed. And what a 
pleasant hour I passed with this superb 
gymnast, who performed on the tiniest 



78 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

twig the most daring feats, and those to 
that strange melody that had at first told 
of his presence ! He was in full plumage, 
and that as tight fitting as that of a Java 
sparrow. He seemed to be thoroughly- 
aware of his beauty from the care and at- 
tention he lavished on it. When a feather 
became ruffled or stood out from its fellows, 
he immediately ceased his exercise, flew 
to a stronger twig and sat there pecking 
and preening until his coat was once more 
in order, then flitted back again and re- 
sumed his exquisite manoeuvres, balancing 
his every motion to the sun's ray, con- 
trasting his sparkling violet-blue with the 
dark green of the leaf and the white of the 
flower. As the bell recalled me to a 
wearisome study, loath to go I arose, and 
my going made the bird recross the brook, 
this time accompanied by his drab-colored 
mate. Then was made clear to me the 
melancholy of his song, the brilliant pres- 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 79 

entation of his beauty and the masterly 
exhibition of his grace. I was witness to 
a bit of bird courtship, in truth to the last 
act of love prior to marriage, and a more 
winsome scene could hardly be enacted. 
The lesson, as usual, that day was a bore. 
The professor, as was his wont, mumbled 
away in mediaeval Latin a stream of dreary 
words, but I paid no attention to him or 
his discourse, my mind was with much 
more pleasant and profitable things. 
Leigh Hunt and the bird had started my 
fancy to offer delights that no dull, plod- 
ding pedagogue, a race that I heartily 
hate, could take from me. 

A Southern friend to whom I told this 
tale, as we drifted, one long, summer's 
afternoon, adown that part of the lordly 
St. Lawrence which is adjacent to, my 
home, on his return to his native Alabama 
sent me a pair of Indigos with a little card 
dangling to their cage, telling me that the 



80 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

tale was worth his gift, and begging me 
to come some day to the land of my early 
wanderings and see the habitat of the In- 
digo, and a longing to do so ever since 
possesses my heart. I put my Indigos in 
the aviary but they became listless and 
sorrow stricken ; they were pining for 
home. Seeing this I removed them to a 
commodious, brass cage and hung them 
in the sunshine, within easy reach of my 
writing desk where, when tired with read- 
ing or writing, I had but to turn on my 
chair to have a chat with them. Once 
noticing the delight with which the male 
bird caught the flies that came within his 
bailiwick, I turned fly catcher and sup- 
plied him in abundance with his luxury. 
He became friendly, ate with evident joy 
from my fingers and finally persuaded his 
shy companion to drop her veil and do 
likewise. 

We became such friends that I removed 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 8 1 

the door from their cage and conferred on 
them the freedom of the room, and after 
three years' exercise of this privilege I 
have not a single fault to find. The 
Bishop, the name I have given to the 
male bird, when I enter my study these 
winter nights and light my lamp, draw 
down the curtain and settle into an easy 
chair with an interesting book in my 
hands, salutes me with a song, and it has 
often happened that while listening to his 
melody I have forgotten the book for the 
pleasures of memory drifted into the van- 
ished past, where the dead live and the 
living are unknown. 

Near my house lies a charming home, 
one that in the fine, soft summer days of 
the North, attracts the eye of every pass- 
ing stranger, and as it is on a road much 
frequented by the gay throng of idle tour- 
ists, there is hardly an hour of the day 
when some one does not stand outside the 



82 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

wicker gate to express admiration for the 
graceful trees, the well shaven lawns, and 
the fancifully made flower plots. The 
songs of birds, mostly the robin, who is a 
well-cared-for pensioner, and that little 
coxcomb, the yellow bird, are constant, 
while the hum of Italian bees seem to link 
the music of birds with the scent of flowers. 
The owner of this nook is a merry, much 
travelled bachelor, who has an opinion on 
most subjects, and a way of expressing it 
that makes his talk charming, if not always 
convincing. He has the faculty of listen- 
ing, as well as that of talking, and no man, 
provided he has anything to say, deems 
silence necessary in his house. He hates 
cant, considers it a privilege to use his 
own intellect, and that, being evenly bal- 
anced, the outcome is rather strange. I 
admit, that he is to his neighbors "a little 
bit queer;" you see he will not run with 
the herd and utter their cry, and in this 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 83 

light the misunderstanding is natural. 
Needless to say, he is a lover of children, 
dogs, birds, books and flowers, and it was 
through these things that I came to his 
heart, as warm a heart as ever beat in a 
human breast. Children on first sight fell 
in love with the big, brawny, laughing, 
blue-eyed man, who was always ready to 
turn his muscular arms into a swing at 
their pleasure, whose loveliest flowers were 
to be pinned by his hands on their white 
frocks. Stray dogs and wandering cats, 
as if by instinct, sought his house and found 
there food and shelter. It is rarely he has 
not some case of misfortune on hand. He 
has, too, his contempts, for who could be 
a man without them, and one of the most 
pronounced is against the vulgar worship 
of money, which is in the summer time so 
much in evidence amongst us. America, 
judged by a summer resort, would furnish 
a pitiable verdict. He is a great lover of 



84 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

books, only the best, for, as he said lying 
one day on the green sward, under an 
apple-tree, with old Andrew Marvell 
open in his hands, "There's enough of the 
best to make a love feast for life." He 
has, in this love, an oddity, which I am far 
from admiring: his books must be costly 
bound, the outside tempting to the eye, a 
foretaste of the hidden pages. But he has 
wealth and the means to satisfy his fad. 

What a sorry sight would my coatless, 
raggy fellows make in their rough cases, 
with his long rows of titled dandies in 
their polished oak cabinets. Yet, I ven- 
tured to tell him once that my pleasure 
while sitting in my little den overlooking 
the St. Lawrence, surrounded by the mas- 
ters in scant attire, was as great, if not 
more so, than his in the finely furnished 
library full of all things that delight the 
eyes. His books cost him but little 
trouble, the writing to his bookseller ; 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 85 

mine came from a poorly filled pocket, 
often the price of a meal, or by pennies 
saved from ordinary comforts with miser- 
ly care. His books were his friends, 
mine were more. Every volume was 
bound up with the memory of the hard- 
ships suffered to make it of my family. 
And the strong roots of love but grow in 
the soil of suffering. 

It was in his library that I first learned 
of the subject of this paper. I said he 
was a lover of birds, but he held against 
all comers, and oftentimes, much to my 
chagrin, that the only place for a bird was 
the open air, and he was fond of quoting 
against me one of my own authorities, 
Leigh Hunt, and this his saying : " Of 
all creatures, restraint and death become 
its winged vivacity the least. " I chal- 
lenged him to come to my study early in 
the morning, and to put forth his quota- 
tion in the presence of my choir of pets. 



86 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

He, as his defence, asked me to spend 
a morning in his orchard, listening to a 
cat-bird, that had built in a clump of 
locust trees, and which was then in the 
full flower of song. I accepted at once 
his proferred invitation, and early one 
morning we sallied forth to a little privacy 
from which he had often watched the 
warbler. We were hardly seated when a 
bird about the size of a robin, but of 
much more compact form, of a slate color, 
alighted a few yards from us, and greedi- 
ly ate some mocking-bird food which my 
friend had thrown in his way. During his 
meal his tail became almost perpendicular 
while his cunning, little eyes kept our 
every movement under his observation. 
The great Dane, Caesar, that had accom- 
panied us, and now lay asleep at our feet, 
dreaming, gave a jerk to his huge body, 
and a snappy groan, possibly the effect of 
a bad dream, when away flew the cat-bird, 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 87 

and from the locusts sent us in rapid suc- 
cession a series of angry mews. "Is that 
your warbler?" said I, taking an unfair ad- 
vantage. "If so, your quotation deserves 
to be forgotten. My least songster would 
not disgrace the aviary with such a vulgar 
exhibition. You have a strange idea of 
bird melody if that bird is your favorite. 
Come to my study and hear the masters." 

"With birds as with books, a taste is 
necessary." My friend paid no attention 
to my banter, but quietly took from his 
jacket pocket a beautifully bound edition 
of Sydney Lanier, and commenced read- 
ing. Reading aloud was to him an exquis- 
ite pleasure, and he cultivated it without 
reserve, until he had become an artist, 
whose work was an inspiration. His 
selection was The Marshes of the Glynn. 

I shall never forget the haunting music 
of those opening lines : 



88 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

"Glooms of the live oaks, beautifully braided and 

woven 
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad 

cloven 
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs. 
Emerald twilights — 
Virginal sky lights. 

Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of 
vows. 
When lovers pace timidly down through the dim 
colonnades 
Of the dim, sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, 

Of the heavenly woods and glades, 
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach with- 
in, 
The wide sea marshes of Glynn. 

Here is the speech of tender passion. 
None but a lover of nature could sing thus, 
one, too, with an eye for her most hidden 
beauties. It was filled with music, love 
and beauty, my first introduction to a poet 
who can know not death and who shall be 
treasured when our idols are in dust. As 
soon as the poem was read, the book was 
returned to his jacket and with a smile he 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 89 

turned toward me, saying, u The next 
number on the programme is a cat bird 
song, and we shall not have long to wait; 
see, he is giving the last touch to his 
coat before he appears in public. There 
he goes, hear him?" 

The cat-bird had left his retreat and 
with it the sulk that had begot that angry 
mew, and mounted a mountain-ash, whose 
berries wore the faintest tinge of red. 

Then, as if to revenge my cruel words, 
he poured out the most wonderful and 
elusive melody. He seemed to have 
stolen the songs of every warbler in his 
vicinity, giving to them a new magic in 
the resetting. 

Once, I thought it was the soft, mel- 
ancholy notes of the golden robin, but 
in a moment I was relieved of my sus- 
picion — and seemed to detect the notes 
of the gray linnet, and so on until I was 
forced to own that he was a master — 



90 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

and my little canons of no gauge to 
measure his magic. Nor can I forget the 
ease with which this wonderful melody 
came. I was unable to detect a single 
movement; some of the finest passages, I 
noticed, were played after a little twitter 
of applause that came from the thickest 
growth of the locusts, where sat, with her 
little head poised in attention, his brood- 
ing and well pleased spouse. What can- 
not love evoke ? The haunt of this bird 
became a place of daily pilgrimage. 

I brought food, scattered it around my 
seat, and when they came in quest, paid 
no attention to their inquisitiveness, which 
became remarkably daring. As soon as 
the young were hatched, discovering that 
I was the purveyor of their food, they 
became most friendly and hopped around 
my bench without the slightest fear. Now 
and then the male bird would spare a few 
minutes from his fatherly cares to sing, 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 9 1 

but his disinclination became more and 
more, until his brood raised, and summer 
dead, his voice was dumb. His was no 
common minstrelsy to be played on any 
stage. It required a summer theatre and 
nature's richest settings, and I did not 
blame him for the care of his heaven-born 
gift. 

Great artists do not step forth at every 
call. My last view of him was in company 
with his wife and children feeding on the 
ripened berries of the mountain-ash. 

His delicious music did not, once I was 
beyond his power, convince me of my 
friend's opinion, that the only place for a 
live bird was the open air. There are 
degrees of enjoyment, and talent is com- 
mendable. Even if my canaries, gold- 
finch, bobolink, etc., must bow to his 
genius, their music is constant and 
always refreshing. He is the luxury of a 
summer day, my pets the lights of the year. 



92 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

While watching the cat bird in my 
friend's orchard, my attention was aroused 
by a few pair of American goldfinches 
commonly called the yellow bird which 
were mating and building in the apple- 
trees. They were a continual source of 
surprises, and when in view, kept me con- 
stantly on the alert, witnessing their mar- 
vellous grace and agility. . 

I find in my note book this entry, 
written in the fields under the date of July 
ioth, '98 : "Yellow bird, yellow bird, 
what a charming little fellow he is ! How 
gracefully he swings from the stem of the 
golden crowned dandelion. He seems 
ever in motion, and in a motion that is 
ever pleasing to the eye. I have seen 
him flitting to-day through the apple-trees 
loaded with flowers, a burning star flash- 
ing through a white and green sky. His 
song has not much compass ; it cannot 
in justice be compared to that of the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 93 

canary, but it has qualities which are lack- 
ing in our more favored musician. Since I 
first heard the yellow bird on the bent top 
of a thistle bough, I have associated his 
manner with his song. It is full of go and 
royal cheer, as bubbling as a spring brook. 

There is no straining after effect in it, 
or copying of the delights of better war- 
blers, but his own whole-hearted, buoyant 
utterance, that floats as carelessly from 
his throat as thistle-down from its pods. 
It is as bracing as the sunshine among 
which he flits. 

The yellow bird is a late comer to the 
North. This year he came the second of 
May, and on the following morning was 
heard in song in my garden and along the 
public road. In the course of a fourteen- 
mile drive, I counted no less than thirty- two 
songsters, heedless of their surroundings ; 
some were among the lavish buds of the 
maples, others on telegraph poles, while 



94 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

not a few preferred fence-rails. They 
were all changing their dress, some of them 
had slight patches of yellow on the back, 
but all in all they were not remarkable for 
beauty, nor for song. Their singing con- 
sisted of a few jerky notes, pitched in a 
high key. It seemed to me as if they 
were trying their instruments, tuning up, 
as it were, for the summer concert." 

There was only one book I could read 
with satisfaction in those hours I devoted, 
ying in the long, P cool July grass, to the 
yellow bird. It was that always compan 
ionable Fly Leaves, a fit book for any 
idle fellow. When the bird was lost to my 
view, I could roll on the grass, bask in 
the sun, open Calverly's book, and laugh 
at the turn of his phrase. To what a 
finish had he not carried the art of Praed. 
How irresistible his humor, how delicate 
his fancy, and how wonderful his gift of 
expression ! I once heard an American 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 95 

novelist declare that he could see nothing 
in this book to give it a vogue. Then 
was clear to me, the dullness of his own 
books ; he lacked humor, and a novelist 
without this gift, can draw but mummies. 
Humor sees the peculiarities in the indi- 
vidual and in the subtle catching ofthese 
lies the greatness and strength of the 
novelist. Fly Leaves has a daily glance ; 
it is within my reach showing on its 
pages, grass stains, juice of berries, lead- 
pencillings telling of its ministry in my 
rambles, and that to my many moods. 
And to those who love to ramble in the 
fields, orchards, or by country roads 
on a sultry summer day, when the spirit 
craves for the light and pleasant, for the 
laughter tipped, let him heed no dull 
novelist, but put C. S. C. in his pocket. 
I was astonished one morning to notice 
in my lettuce patch, a little flock of yel- 
low birds. They were noisy, quarrel- 



96 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

some and fighting for favors. With my 
glass I recognized that in the company, 
and the cause of the quarrel,, were four 
or five females, flirting with shocking 
audacity. As I wished to experiment 
with this bird in my aviary, I placed an 
old goldfinch in a trap-cage and directed 
my boy to set the trap as close to the 
flock as possible without provoking them 
to flight. Easy-going and careless as he 
was in manual labor, he was in this an 
expert which I used to think came from 
his large dose of Indian blood, to which 
due credit was given in the mouth and 
cheek-bones. 

No one could have had more pride in 
the fulfilment of my design. Scarcely 
had the cage been in position than the 
goldfinch commenced his calling, an- 
swered by the whole flock which were 
now around the cage. One of the ladies 
seeing the thistle seed and wondering no 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 97 

doubt how it could be there so early in 
the season, and being tormented by curi- 
osity, that privilege of her sex, went to in- 
vestigate. Click, the trap was sprung. 
Greed and conquest flashed in the boy's 
eyes and found speech-setting in a wild 
yell, that leaped from his throat, giving 
dance music to his feet. I curbed his 
fervor, and bade him to remain quiet, 
as one door was still unsprung, and waited 
for a chivalrous knight to rescue the 
captive maiden. 

Nor had we long to wait, for a partic- 
ular, quarrelsome fellow on hearing her 
call of distress darted to her aid, finding 
himself not only captive but separated 
from the lady by a hidden wire screen. 
He made a brave battle for freedom, clung 
desperately to the wires while thrusting 
his head through them, but vain his efforts, 
it was might, man's most potent weapon, 
conquering right. My boy was in a flurry 



98 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

of excitement (his age was twelve). Ail 
his body waved in motion to the little 
captive's struggles, while his eyes flashed 
impatiently for a sign. No sooner was 
the sign given than he ran to the cage, 
and in his eagerness of possession, 
allowed, much to my joy, the knight to 
escape. Shall I ever forget his face, a 
perfect photograph of his mind ! Across 
it sped revenge, sorrow, triumph ; one poor 
captive yet remained. "I shall have that 
fellow soon !" said the boy as he brought 
me in his closed hand the fluttering, 
tightly held little lady. As a fact the 
boy's boast was never made good, though 
we tried all manner of stratagem to take 
him, save birdlime, a cruel manner much 
to my dislike. He laughed at our every 
device, begetting so heavily the boy's 
scorn that I had to issue an order against 
stones, night raids, and other unfair ad- 
vantages for his protection. And I must 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 99 

admit that my boy had grounds for his 
discontent. The yellow bird would sit 
for hours on the trap door, preening his 
feathers, singing a cheery song, and 
driving all other birds from the trap, to 
which proceedings my impetuous Leon 
objected. The boy said it was spite, and 
I have seen so much of that in birds that 
I am in no position to deny the boy's 
judgment. I secretly admired the bird's 
saucy behavior, but as Leon was my 
expert in all things that pertained to bird 
nesting, bird capture, I did not dare to 
enlarge his disgust. 

I befriended him, however, in many 
ways ; I put within his reach material for 
nest building which he used with an artist- 
ry that won my heart. I scattered thistle 
and canary seed in his way and by these 
means gave him leisure to bid defiance to 
my alert boy, and when he left us I could 
not help thinking that I had lost many an 



100 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

occasion for laughter, and many an exqui- 
site study of boy and bird. 

We put our captive in a dark cage, 
gave her no annoyance and in a week 
found her content enough to be used as a 
call-bird. 

"When maidens sue, 
Men give like gods," 

— and the giving in this instance was 
themselves. Males in peerless attire, 
lemon-colored back, black cap and black 
and white wings came at her sharp com- 
mand and entered captivity for her nod. 
In less than a week I had ten of the most 
beautiful birds in my aviary, where they 
quarreled and fought with persistent de- 
light, setting all order in riot until I was 
compelled, in deference to my well be- 
haved birds to banish them from the 
aviary. This I did, retaining a few choice 
songsters, to whom I granted the freedom 
of my study, and which are now, as I 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. IOI 

write, living peacefully with a Java spar- 
row and a bobolink. It is winter now, but 
when Spring's riot stirs their blood and 
beautifies their feathers, I, taught from 
experience, will open their cage doors and 
let them ramble around my room. One 
of them that often perches on my pen has 
added to his repertoire not a few foreign 
pieces, mostly those of an English gold- 
finch, but somehow I like him best when 
he plays his own piece, for it gives me in 
these winter days, so many delightful pic- 
tures of wanderings, marked by the songs 
of his tribe. I have often wondered that 
this bird, so fascinating to imaginative 
minds, should have no poet to sing him to 
fame. Lowell has tuned his lyre to the 
blue-bird, Bryant to the bobolink, and 
Whittier to Polly from the Spanish Main, 
but no poesy halos the head of the bird 
most worthy to its crown. Would I were 
a poet to sing his praise, but poets are 



102 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

born to their birthright, and it is a birth- 
right that cannot be stolen or usurped, so 
I content myself with hopes, that the day 
is not far distant when his name shall be 
added to the anathology of song, and in 
the wish of John Gilpin, "May I be there 
to see !" 

In weeding out my library the other 
day, I came across a volume of prose and 
verse that had, on former hunts, eluded 
my search by contriving to fall behind a 
set of Grotes' History of Greece. 

The little volume might have remained 
there indefinitely, had not my boy, in the 
hot pursuit of a mouse, pulled the books 
from their places. This mouse was his 
black beast, that scorned his authority 
and laughed at his traps. It lived prince- 
ly, eating the birds' seed, entering the 
cages with engaging audacity and fright- 
ening the canaries, as the boy said, "out 
of their wits." I could see no cause for 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 103 

complaint in the conduct of Mr. Mouse; 
I could not blame him for getting his 
living and that the best within his reach, 
which happened to be my bird seed. 

Nor could I bear him ill for refusing at 
a boy's invitation to walk into a trap, and 
sacrifice his life to satisfy a passion for 
conquest and revenge. On this occasion, 
however, the boy vindicated the truth of 
a saying that was constantly in his mouth, 
"The fox runs long but he's caught at 
last." The mouse had run his last race. 

Mr. Grotes' stately volumes could give 
him no protection, as they were roughly 
thrown to the floor, one by one, the 
mouse retreating, until its last stand was 
in a corner, behind the book of verse and 
prose, which soon followed to the floor 
those which had been its shield, and the 
unprotected, panting mouse in a last 
effort for liberty lost his life by a strong 
blow from the boy's fist, a blow that gave 



104 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

him joy and talk for the rest of the day. 
In replacing Mr. Grotes, I found this 
book and put it aside until the weeding 
day came, a day of some sorrow to me, 
as I have a dislike to part with books, 
but of much rejoicing to the village chil- 
dren in whose little library my weedings 
are welcomed as fine gifts. 

It all depends on the point of view, and 
that changes with the years and our 
mental growth. 

Books that were the passion of my 
youth are no longer so ; they seem now so 
dull and commonplace, and as I lean back 
in my chair, at the sight of these books, 
and ask myself how is it possible that I once 
could go without my supper and feign a 
headache to read them? I forget, for the 
time, that they are just the same and that it 
is my attitude that has changed ; that in the 
days when I read them they fitted thor- 
oughly my condition and administered to 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 105 

my "delights, while at the same time, 
strange to say, cultivating their own dis- 
taste that should later show itself in my 
haste to worship at new shrines. The 
book of prose and verse has no literary 
merit. It is one of those books written by 
an enthusiast who vindicates his mistaken 
right |to the literary field by publishing a 
book at his own expense, and holding 
ever ^afterwards a poor opinion of the 
mental capacity of his fellow-men. I but 
mention it here, because it brought, in 
one of its poems, an incident to my mind, 
long forgotten, by prompting my own 
memory to fill out and breathe into the 
half-caught picture of the author, a soul. 
His poem tells of a red bird that he once 
saw under conditions similar to my seeing ; 
verily do I believe that it was the same 
bird, but as his poetry torments rather 
than delights, poetry's true mission, I 
prefer'my own vision and imperfect prose, 



106 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

which is no fraud practised on the reader, 
as my prose can in no wise fall lower than 
the bard's poetry. 

In one of the Southern States in a rural 
nook, a place of quiet and rest, there is a 
little country cemetery surmounted by a 
plain wooden cross that marks the last 
resting place of a devout and gracious 
man, whose whole life was at the behest 
of others, whose endurance and charity 
are still spoken of in a low, tender voice, 
still telling of the heart gapes left by his 
going. The cemetery is skirted by mag- 
nolias, whose rich scent blends with that 
of the roses, phlox and petunias, which, 
in the summer time creep over the graves, 
mixing their bloom in one gorgeous 
bouquet. It was my pleasure one even- 
ing when nature was in her merriest mood 
and dressed in her most befitting gown, 
to turn aside from the dusty highway, and 
seek rest in this most beautiful and most 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 107 

unfrequented of grave-yards. Seating 
myself in a rustic chair that had been 
built under the shade of a magnolia > 
planted by the one whose grave it now 
shades, and lulled to revery by the fra- 
grant flowers, the dying hum of the little 
village and the vesper songs of the mock- 
ing-birds whose favorite haunt was this 
acre of the dead, I spent most of the 
evening in a land of sweet and melancholy 
dreams with Shelley's lines as the peg on 
which all my pictures were hung : 

"All things that we love and cherish, 
Like ourselves, must fade and perish : 
Such is our rude mortal lot, 
Love itself would, did they not." 

Out of the revery and from these pict- 
ures my mind was drawn by a hitherto 
unrecognized bird-note which seemed to 
me to be the spirit of gentle melancholy 
that hovers around such consecrated 
places in the summer days, resigning her 



108 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

sceptre to the spirit of fear, the guardian 
destiny of the night. As the song became 
louder and clearer I was enabled to note 
from whence it came, and rising, pro- 
ceeded in its direction, when to my 
surprise, my spirit of gentle melancholy 
was none other than a red bird perched 
on the cross, scattering his music over the 
grave of the scholar and lover of nature. 
Later I was told that this was the evening 
custom of this red bird whose protection 
was sfefe in the hands of the villagers. 
"I never," said a village crone, "heard a 
bird sing so sweetly, but it is not a bird, it's 
an angel dressed in red that sings on his 
cross." The song of this bird was fitting 
to the place, it harmonized with its sur- 
roundings, and those who write of his 
song as dull and monotonous have but 
studied him in some cramped city bird 
store. In his native haunts, where his 
life is free and the chatter of other birds 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. log 

do not drown his voice, he has a song of 
his own worth any man's ear. His plum- 
age, too, on a sunshiny day is altogether 
charming, the dark red of his back blend- 
ing with the bright scarlet of the rest of 
his body, the crest raised or lowered with 
his fancy, the aristocratic bearing, all 
combine to make him what he is, a hand- 
some bird, and I have never questioned 
the taste of those Europeans who, consid- 
ering plumage and song regard him as the 
prince of American song-birds. Then he 
is hardy in captivity, does not sulk and 
droop in his cage if his master treats him 
intelligently, but takes life as pleasantly 
as a goldfinch, and in a little time becomes 
the most sagacious of bird companions. 
My bird, "Old Kentucky," the gift of a 
valued friend, was sent to me in '96. He 
was then but three months old. I put 
him in the aviary, where he showed signs 
of discontentment, such as loss of appetite 



110 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

and sitting as a puff-ball on his perch for 
hours at a time, and in this mood became 
the sport of a grayfinch and a Java spar- 
row. The finch, the worst scoundrel I 
liave met in my bird experience, would 
chase him to one end of the aviary and 
getting him in a corner would peck and 
harrass him until I came to his rescue. 
The Java sparrow on every meeting would 
pluck his feathers. It was impossible for 
him to live and thrive in such barbarous 
society, so I put him in a cage with a hen 
canary, which was very tame, and then 
set the cage on a little table by the edge 
of my writing desk. 

At first he resented such a close com- 
panionship by hastily flying from one end 
of his cage to the other on my least 
motion, but finding this performance a 
bore from so many repetitions, and learn- 
ing from the undisturbed canary that 
there was no cause for such a fuss, he 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I I I 

gradually got rid of his foolishness until 
he paid no more attention to my move- 
ments. 

Now was the time to show my desire 
for his friendship, when he had cast aside 
his fear. So I approached his cage at a 
certain hour, thrice a day, giving him 
hempseed or a grub, a grub most general- 
ly, as the dinner bell rang, and he soon 
learned to associate the sound of the bell 
with the grub. I have now two reminders 
of the dinner hour, a fox terrier which 
never misses to enter my study at the 
minute of twelve o'clock to conduct me 
to the dining hall, his ulterior wish I will 
not mention, and "Old Kentucky," which 
at that hour comes to his cage door and 
tells me plainly that it is time to give him 
his grub. I often purposely remain after 
the time to test their patience and on 
every occasion found they had none. 
The fox-terrier became impudent and 



112 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

tugged at my trousers' legs, and the red 
bird threw up his crest, pecked the wires 
and told me in sharp speech what he 
thought of my conduct. The moment I 
left my chair the quarrel was over, and 
our old friendship renewed. "Old Ken- 
tucky" could not keep spite. I have seen 
him offer a part of his meal to the gray- 
finch and suffer that scamp's abuse for his 
tenderness. This tenderness I have 
heard spoken of, but an incident that 
came last spring under my own observa- 
tion, was convincing. During a sickness 
of a few weeks that confined me to my 
room I was unable to visit "Old Ken- 
tucky." My absence so preyed on him 
that he became dull and spiritless, and 
my household warned me of my coming 
loss. "Why not bring him in here?"' I 
said, one morning when I was told that 
he was ruffled up in the bottom of his 
cage, "while there's life, there's hope." 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I I 3 

My household shook their head and mut- 
tered wisdom, but "to please the sick" 
the cage was brought to my bedside. I 
removed the bird, had a long chat with 
him, coaxed him to eat a spider and ex- 
ercise a little around the room, all of 
which he did at my biddance. His sick- 
ness came from my absence, and now 
that we were united his recovery was 
magical. Judge of the consternation to 
the wisdom of my household, when that 
evening "Old Kentucky" perched on the 
edge of my water pitcher and gave us an 
evening concert. 

"That will do you good/' said the 
Doctor, "it's better than medicine." I 
have always thought so. 

My first observation on the bobolink 
was made but a few years ago, though it 
is more than probable that I have often 
passed him unnoticed in my extended 
travels. I was lying in a country mead- 



114 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

ow, under the shade of a crab-apple tree, 
reading a book that has been a travelling 
companion of mine since first I tasted its 
pages among the islands of the Adriatic. 
The book was none other than Stoddard's 
South Sea Idyls, of all books of travel that 
I know of the most bewitching. I have 
read Melvill's with delight, happily wan- 
dered with Louis Becke, but Stoddard 
alone was capable of making me forget 
my whereabouts, and leading me whither 
he chose. He also added to my ambi- 
tions, for I have an undying longing to 
see his golden isles, and summer seas. A 
book that can make us forget ourselves 
and our little aims for blissful rest, flavor 
the imagination with a new delight, give 
wings to fancy and tickle the memory 
with pictures worthy of her interest and 
retention, is indeed a noble book. Now 
it may be deemed an oddity of mine, when 
I here state that the mood of the book on 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I I 5 

that July morning had something in com- 
mon with the merry, careless jangle of the 
bobolink as he crossed the meadow. I 
was reading Kahele and the style so art- 
ful, yet so simple and natural, the art hid- 
ing art, that I could not get it out of my 
head but somehow or other the bird and 
book had an affinity. It may have been 
my own mind, I cannot tell, I but merely 
record an impression. The bobolink came 
very close to my resting place and, lighting 
in a clump of wild raspberry bushes, soon 
disappeared from my view, while another 
bird, as if relieved from duty, flew away in 
the direction his relief had come. Now 
here was a little tangle to unfold full of 
pleasure for an inquisitive bird-lover, so I 
arose and cautiously walked to the briers, 
keeping my eye beyond them, for expe- 
rience will soon tell the observer that birds, 
whether or not they notice an object 
of alarm, are too cunning to light in close 



Il6 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

vicinity to their nests, As I approached 
the skirts of the raspberries and made a 
quick, startling noise, a bird rose from a 
little declivity covered with large white 
and yellow field daisies. 

Its cry of chink, chink, repeated at brief 
intervals, made it easy of recognition. 
The tangle vanished, the nest hidden 
among the flowers was found, and a little 
piece of white cotton tied to a sapling, the 
better to guide my glass in the watch of 
their movements. 

I had read that the bobolink had but a 
few notes, tiresome from constant repeti- 
tion, but I was to learn that such a state- 
ment was a gross libel on a bird that well 
deserves a place in the list of our native 
song birds. I have watched the male bird 
during mating fever, trying to pursuade a 
shy, young female to come and dwell with 
him, and the music he made to induce her 
to accede to his reasonable request was so 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 117 

wonderful and so unexpected that I made 
up my mind to add a bobolink to my 
aviary. For this reason I, every other day, 
visited my easily discovered nest, and 
before the birds could fly I had wired in 
the nest beyond their escape. 

A village urchin, noting my walks, lay 
in ambush until he discovered the secret 
of my rambles, then he lost no time in 
robbing the nest and carrying the birds 
home where from ill-usage they died in a 
few days. Emboldened by what he called 
his good luck he was in the habit of 
following me in all my country strolls, 
when I hit upon an excellent remedy to 
rid me of such a persistent nuisance. 

My great Dane, Csesar, had been taught 
by my neighbor's children to play "Go 
seek, I'll hide," a game which consisted in 
sending the dog after some object pointed 
out to him, generally one of the children, 
while the sender hid. Now the play of 



Il8 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

the dog was to bring the object pointed 
out to those who had sent him and he ac- 
complished this feat by tugging on the 
dress and pushing with his great fore shoul- 
ders. I left to Leon the pleasant work of 
filling the boy's ears with tales derogatory 
to the Dane's character, dwelling espec- 
ially on his perverted taste for biting 
boys. 

Now Leon painted picturesque fiction on 
a large canvas. All things being ready I 
started out, leading the dog, followed by 
the wily urchin. Once out of town, and far 
from men and houses, I lay behind a huge 
bowlder and deceiving the boy who sped 
on at a brisk gait, waited until he was in 
the dog's sight, then said I, "Caesar, go 
and seek." The Dane wagged his tail, 
looked in my face to see if I really meant 
such a child's frolic, and then went gallop- 
ing in the boy's direction, coming up to 
him before he had time to wheel around 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I 19 

on his tract. I followed and reached the 
boy just as he was about to lie down in 
abject fright. I pretended to have much 
difficulty in affecting his rescue, warned 
him that the dog would suffer no one to 
follow his master, dried his tears and dis- 
missed him with a few pennies. I won his 
affection and ever afterwards had his love, 
but not his company. I appointed him 
on my own responsibility as game-protector 
of the surrounding country at the munifi- 
cent sum of six and a quarter cents per 
week and the promise of a pair of pigeons, 
if, in my judgment, he had acquitted him- 
self honorably in his task. 

And I shall not pass him without ac- 
knowledging his entire devotion to duty, 
and the good which came t?o the feathered 
tribe. So skilful himself in the pursuit of 
his early occupation, he turned this skill to 
his new purpose and to the disgust of his 
former friends. The urchin who was 



120 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

capable of robbing a nest and doing so un- 
detected by my gamekeeper, was a rarity. 
His very name and the close friendship he 
bore to me gave even to his name a 
restraining influence. He was wise and in 
every way exalted this influence by refer- 
ing to me as one able to jail a boy without 
judge or jury, and Leon, ordinarily so full 
of contradiction, was never known to 
belittle his master's greatness. To these 
two pillars of the law I entrusted the find 
ing of a bobolink's nest, which commission 
was duly performed with zeal and pride. 

The birds were about to leave the nest, 
and on our approach, they did so, one of 
them being hit by Leon's hat and, brought 
to the ground, was quickly placed in cus- 
tody by Leon's partner, and this was 
enough for my purpose. I put this yonng 
one in a trap, placed the trap near the old 
nest and went into the covert from whence I 
could see without being seen. At my feet 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 121 

crouched the two boys impatient and rest- 
less. In a few minutes the male bobolink, 
being attracted by the cry of his little one, 
flew to the trap and after along inspection 
entered it to the glorious music of two 
boyish throats. There is a wonderful fas- 
cination in boyish merriment. The old 
bird in our hands, the young one was al- 
lowed freedom for a time. 

In the meantime I carefully prepared 
my plans. I kept the bobolink in a small 
cage and in a dark room for a fortnight, 
then I transferred him to the trap as a 
decoy and started out for his old home. 
In less than an hour from my arrival there 
I had trapped his whole family — his wife, 
and three young ones, now full grown and 
able to shift for themselves. I carried 
home the young ones (giving the old 
couple their freedom and my own good 
wishes); these I at once placed in a large 
cage containing yellow birds, American 



122 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

linnets, vesper sparrows, etc., the harvest 
of my trap. I fed them on soaked canary- 
seed, eggs and crackers and green stuff, 
and my bobolinks in a few weeks became 
actually tame. 

One of them, in a month's captivity, 
became so social that he would perch on 
the seed dish while I replenished it, and I 
took good care to show my appreciation 
of his spirit by dropping in front of him 
a few hemp seeds now and then which 
he picked up with avidity. Thus noting 
his good disposition I set about his train- 
ing, giving him a cage after his heart, for 
the bobolink in captivity is an active bird, 
and placing it in the center of a company 
of artists. At first his song was a method- 
less jangle, a note of discord in the choir, 
a fact which he soon noted, and set about 
to rectify in a very sensible way, that of 
learning from his masters. The wise look 
that came to his young face, and the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 123 

attitudes of attention he maintained for 
days were mirth-provoking to my house- 
hold. What was our delight when one 
afternoon he danced on his perch, spread 
his wings, and gave us a song of much 
compass and genuine feeling. 

True, it was a stolen melody, but so 
wrought with his own genius as to defeat 
all criticism. Since then he has added 
greatly to his compass ; only the other 
day I noticed he had pilfered the sweetest 
trill in the nonpareil's song, and coming, 
as it did, between his own merry jangle 
and the finished music of a German cana- 
ry, the effect was particularly fine. He 
has his peculiarities, and all on the inter- 
esting side. He loves to bathe, requires 
a large bathing pan, and takes his bath 
by jumping into it, beating the water 
with his wings and curiously working his 
long legs as if not knowing what to do 
with them. When he is thoroughly wet 



124 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

he seeks his perch and waltzes up and 
down it, spreading wings and tail until dry. 
He will permit no bird to light on his 
cage, and carries on a daily battle with 
a gray finch whose audacity and pugnacity 
has turned him loose. 

If I let him out of the cage he at once 
seeks this finch, who is always at his 
pleasure for a fight, and commences 
battle. The finch's plan of attack is to 
pull out the head feathers, and such an 
artful master has he become in this line, 
that in one encounter he has made poor 
Bobby bald. I have tried to make them 
friends, but in vain ; like men they glorify 
in their own foolishness. Will years bring 
the philosophic mind? Does it in men? 
And should we not expect it more from 
them than from birds? 

In front of my house is a row of stately 
English elms, planted by an old Vermont- 
er, whose acquaintance, judging from the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 25 

tales that linger with his memory, I would 
have loved to have made in the flesh. 
He was a schoolmaster, but not of the 
kind nowadays so much in evidence, 
whose god is some barren text-book, and 
whose petty rules dwarf all finer striving 
of the spirit. This schoolmaster was a 
man, and his energy went passionately out 
to make men. He taught his students 
the value of health to soul and body, 
opened their eyes to the beautiful vision of 
Nature all around them, and to the maj- 
esty of common things. He drove out 
the narrow, cruel, cat-like, country bigot- 
ry, and replaced it with charity, and 
from this charity came breadth and depth 
which sweetened their own lives, and 
helped all others with whom they were 
brought in contact. Such a schoolmaster 
is a benediction. His elms, planted after 
his own fashion, against all the experience 
and ominous head shaking of the country 



126 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

prophets, grew marvellously, as if to prop 
the gentle scholar's theory, and to-day 
they are stately trees leading to a grassy 
country lane that bears his name, the 
pride of a village that bartered over the 
price of his coffin. When death tapped at 
his door he went as becomingly as he had 
lived, leaving his all to his landlady, and 
little as it was, an old silver watch, his thread- 
bare clothing, and a box of books, be it 
cheerfully written to her credit that it was 
more than she sought, for she was a 
woman with a heart as well as a mind. 

Through her three of his books, bear- 
ing on their pages a fullness of proofs 
that they were favorites, came into my 
possession, a Virgil, a Horace and a stout 
well-clad volume of English poetry, being 
the select works of the British poets in a 
chronological series, from Ben Jonson 
to Beattie, with biographical and critical 
notices by Dr. Aikin. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 27 

Who can tell the power and influence of 
such a book in a sequestrated country 
village fifty years ago ! "His English 
books," said the landlady, "went all 
around the country, often as far as a hun- 
dred miles, and this book that I am giv- 
ing you was the greatest favorite, and 
that's the reason that the cover is so 
thick. 

"That cover was put on it by a man that 
knew it from the first to the last leaf, Jamey 
Thompson, the lame Scotch shoemaker. 
Wherever you see a cross, that's Jamey's 
marking, and Schoolmaster Kimpton used 
to say Jamey's crosses done the book no 
harm, for wherever Jamey made a cross 
any sensible man would halt for a few 
minutes' thought." Now from long com- 
panionship, I, too, can bear the same testi- 
mony to Jamey Thompson's cross as did 
Master Kimpton, and they fill me with 
wonder at the massive intellect of the man 



128 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

and the power with which he sought the 
marrow of a poet. So to Master Kimpton 
and Jamey Thompson and the kindly old 
dame I owe many a pleasant hour, sitting 
under Master Kimpton's elms, elms which 
brought me another pleasure, and one 
which ministered to a mood as success- 
fully as Dr. Aikin's book. 

They were the only haunt of the golden 
robins who came up from the South early 
and were only driven away by our pierc- 
ing winds, and after rearing their broods, as 
a rule, in perfect safety. I have often in 
the fine June mornings, dispensed with 
sleep to hear from the elm choir the mat- 
in hymn to greet Mother Nature. It 
.would generally commence with the ori- 
ole's slow, mellow note, announcing the 
mystic rite, then came the rich,, bright, 
clear, piercing music of the robin, followed 
by the chants of the whole feathered king- 
dom rising and falling, now gushing forth 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 29 

from the trees as if their leaves were 
breathing melody, now dying away as 
if it were but the zephyr's first kiss. From 
his heights, the matin hymn finished, the 
golden robin would fly to an orchard near 
by where he spent most of the working 
day in quest of food, for which action I 
had to reason long and often with the 
owner who held that this bird was a bud- 
destroyer as well as an insect feeder, cer- 
tainly a perversity of original taste like 
that of the bullfinch, sparrow, etc., and 
the formation of an artificial one that has 
made him many enemies. 

My duty, however, was to the bird, so 
I took the other side of the argument, 
using every means lawful as an advocate 
to mystify and confound that most dull 
and uninteresting of men, the retired far- 
mer who, after years of toil and penury, 
settles down in our rural village to whine 
away the balance of life. 



130 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

I was only successful when I hung up 
in the post office a huge dodger done in 
charcoal and signed by a committee of 
women, whose sympathies, always on the 
best side, I had aroused, threatening dire 
punishment to all bird destroyers, and of- 
fering a fine for any and all information 
that would jail the culprits. This had the 
desired effect, "For," said the farmer with 
emphasis, "I will get into no controversy 
with women in the town I live in," where- 
in he made a philosophic observation. I 
have had an odd idea that the traditional 
picture of Uncle Sam was after a drawing 
of a retired farmer, caught in his whine 
against the increase of village taxes. 
Though later by exact observation, I was 
forced to admit that the golden robin did 
now and then destroy a few buds, which 
information I was careful to keep hidden, 
but small indeed is the soul who could be- 
grudge him these little peculations. My 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I 3 I 

interest in his behalf was appreciated, and 
by putting food in the lawn after the 
hatching time I was permitted to study 
him and his less handsomely clad wife at 
short range. 

In the bright sunshine it was a pretty 
sight to see the male bird in his orange 
.and black, strut up and down the lawn 
with a pride and show of power that was 
really laughable but quite excusable in so 
handsome a bird. I remember one of 
those instances when his pride had, much 
•to my disgust, a sudden fall. 

A pair of bold, bad sparrows that I 
/had in confinement, and whose liberty had 
been gladly granted, mated and built in 
the porch surrounding my house, and no- 
ticing my affection for the golden robins 
determined to drive them off at all hazards. 
I witnessed their first attack. 

Flying from the porch, without the 
slightest warning, they|lit one on each 



132 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

side of the gay fellow, and gave battle, peck- 
ing furiously and with loud chatter his 
head. At first taken unawares he soon re- 
covered and drawing his head far back on 
his body, shot out his long, piercing bill 
with a rapidity and aim that soon drove 
the sparrows to the elms where they held 
a lengthy converse, then they flew away,, 
and in less than five minutes returned with 
at least a dozen more of their fellows who 
lost no time in attacking the object of 
their assault. It was useless to fight 
against such opponents, so he escaped 
sadly mauled, followed by a chattering 
throng, boasting, I have no doubt, of their 
miserable victory. From that day I de- 
puted my boy, Leon, to check the audac- 
ity of the saucy sparrows and keep them 
off the lawn, which he did during my 
absence by transferring the pair and their 
brood to an old and unused lot. Another 
experience is worth relating. I hada 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 33 

watched through my glass the building of 
an oriole's nest, a long, pendulous pouch 
swinging from a most delicate elm twig, 
yet so screened that no untrained eye 
might detect it. "This," thought I, "is 
a nest safe from marauding urchins and 
hen-hawks," so I continued my observa- 
tions learning that the male bird sat on 
the eggs, as well as the female, and during 
the day much more constantly, and such 
chivalry is well worthy of praise. At 
length the young birds came, three in 
number, giving active work to the parent 
birds, whose cunning in entering and leav- 
ing the nest was a constant puzzle, and 
that especially so with the female whose 
darker color baffled oftentimes my most 
determined efforts. She would leave the 
lawn, dive into the tree, feed her little ones, 
while I, oblivious of her presence, still 
waited for her coming. How petulant I 
was with her uncalled for, as I thought, 



134 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

diplomacy, but later I was willing to ad- 
mit her right and good sense, and to be 
taught that birds have a reason for their 
acting. 

One morning taking Dr. Aikin in my 
hand, as I used to call the old school- 
master's book, I left the house for a 
tramp in the fields. As I passed the 
elm I heard a loud noise which I at once 
identified as a bird-cry of distress, and 
looking in the direction of the sound soon 
discovered the cause. A red squirrel 
was cautiously testing the twig prior to 
making a morning meal of the young 
*golden robins, while their helpless 
parents were fluttering and complaining 
in a most piteous manner. Then I learned 
the necessity of the bird's cunning. There 
was but one thing to do and that to be 
done quickly. I returned to the house, 
snatched my gun and returning found the 



*Oriole and golden robin are the same bird 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I 3 5 

murderer ready to perpetrate his fell pur- 
pose. On my arrival, possibly deterred 
by Leon's loud voice and the bark of the 
dogs, he fell back for a moment, and as 
he did so I aimed and fired, killing him 
instantly, shattering the twig and bring- 
ing to a convenient limb the nest which 
was hastily sought by Leon. Its occu- 
pants were put in a purposely made cage 
and hung high up in the elm trunk, where 
the old birds lavished on them their wealth 
of care. I afterward transferred them to 
an aviary for soft-billed birds, where they 
at once followed the regime of the other 
prisoners. Two of these birds I lost from 
inexperience, in the moult, but the third, 
a male bird, is very lively. and, from my 
interest in him, I have been able to dis- 
cover a health-giving diet, consisting of 
mocking bird food, meat scraps, eggs 
and grated crackers, berries and plenty of 
green food. His song as yet is low and 



136 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

timid, but I hope, under the tutelage of 
his wild brethren, that it will gain in 
strength and compass. I am having a 
new cage built for his convenience, flat 
and capacious, for he is apt to hurt his 
head on a round top, and he loves room. 
It will certainly be pleasant in the summer 
sunshine to hang his cage in the shade of 
the elms, and listen to the choir that will 
come at his call. 

There is one book whose fascination 
never grows old. 

It was in my youth a volume of con- 
tinual delight, and what it was then it 
is to-day whfen youth has vanished. I 
refer to Travels in Tarlary, Thibet and 
China, by M. Hue. I well remember 
how for its sake I once suffered corporal 
punishment from one of those teachers 
whose brutal instincts, if I may say so, 
survive all culture. While he talked 
glibly of the ennobling office of teacher, 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I 37 

he debauched it by his cruelty. He was 
one of those little men so common to our 
civilization like the fire-ant described by 
Mr. Bates, "that seem to attack persons 
out of sheer malice." My copy, the little 
two volume red-edition, was confiscated, 
and with this admonition, that "my love 
for such stuff was a very evident proof of 
the weakness of my intellect." 

But I thank heaven that no such teacher, 
or the dread of his ferule, could keep me 
from "such stuff." For it is the stuff that 
enters most readily as a permanent part 
of life. When the dull lessons and bald 
explanations of the school-master, the 
work of weary years, are forgotten with a. 
pleasing thankfulness, memory holds 
sacredly the impression of such books as 
Abbe Hue's. But I am, as the schoolman, 
said, straying from my thesis, which, in 
the present paper, relates to the house 
sparrow, and I only intended to use the 



138 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

name of Abbe Hue in connection with a 
quotation, when the image of the school- 
master, still green in my memory, led me 
on. A plain case of association of ideas. 
Says Abbe Hue, that most acute and 
veracious of travellers: "The sparrow is 
a regular cosmopolite ; we have found it 
wherever we have found man ; ever with 
the same vivid, petulant, quarrelsome 
character, ever with the same sharp, angry 
cry. It is, however, to be remarked that 
in Tartary, China, and Thibet it is, perhaps, 
more insolent than in Europe, because, 
there, nobody makes war upon it, and its 
nest and brood are piously respected. 
You see it boldly enter the house, live 
there on familiar terms, and pick up at its 
leisure the remnants of man's food. The 
Chinese call it "Kio-nio-eul (bird of the 
family)." The Abbe, just in that para- 
graph, shows his one native power of ob- 
servation. And he wrote, too, a good 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 39 

many years before an imaginative American 
naturalist made the fanciful discovery 
that the sparrow followed the fortune of 
the Anglo Saxon race. 

I must confess it was just on account of 
this vivid, petulant, quarrelsome character 
that my interest in the sparrow grew. I 
had seen him in many lands, and he was 
ever the same saucy, self-possessed, pug- 
nacious bird, giving his fellows to under- 
stand that he possessed the earth, and if 
they did not acquiesce in his opinion, not 
hesitating a moment to prove his assump- 
tion at the edge of his bill. I have seen 
him on the thatch roof of the Irish cottier, 
amid the turrets of Notre Dame, in the 
dirty alley ways that lead from Italian 
streets, and among the snow-drifts of the 
north, and always with a love I could not 
curb. 

He was oftentimes dirty, ragged and 
smoke-dyed, but one quality he always 



140 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

possessed, and that was manliness. He 
was sufficient for himself. Wherever 
met he was on easy terms with his sur- 
roundings. He seems above all birds in- 
sensible to fear. An old soldier once told 
in my hearing, that during a hard fought 
battle, where the artillery was much in evi- 
dence, the sparrows continued their chat- 
tering as if there was neither danger nor 
wonderment nigh. And with this bravery 
he has another quality which is generally 
associated with it, at least in books, and 
that is cunning. All the heroes I have 
read of were men of cunning, not in the 
limited and perverted sense of the word 
in these days, but in that of its first sense 
as it came from the mint of speech. Then 
it meant knowledge, and only in that 
meaning would I apply it to the sparrow, 
for of cunning in the ordinary sense he 
possesses not a particle. 

This cunning gives to his bravery, just 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 141 

as it did to Caesar's and Napoleon's, an 
advantage. He knows his enemies, their 
plans, when to fight and when to run 
away, when to expose his bravery and be 
a hero, when to withdraw it and remain 
both heroic and sensible. His enemies are 
so numerous and so persistent in their at- 
tacks that there can be no doubt but his 
cunning is a growth. 

The city sparrow is to the country 
sparrow what the street gamin is to the 
country bumpkin. He can devise means 
to accomplish an object that his country 
brother would never dream of. In one of 
the down-town streets of New York, 
noted for its dirt and the multitude and 
diversity of its smells, I saw, one bright 
Sunday morning, a male sparrow ttying 
to carry a piece of twine to his nest. 

All his efforts, and they were many, 
were futile. Finally he dropped the twine, 



142 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

walked up and down meditating for a few 
seconds, and then flew away. 

Another sparrow immediately took up 
the task, and by coiling the string around 
his body rose in flight, to be met by the 
returning sparrow and his wife in mid-air 
and forced to the ground, where he was 
soundly thrashed for his theft. The two 
conquering sparrows set about the busi- 
ness that had brought them, and seizing 
the twine in their bills by that principle of 
co-operation, so unknown to the working 
men among whom they lived, bore their 
burden easy and safely aloft as a lining for 
their nest. I have purposely put twine on 
the lawn of my country-house to test the 
country sparrow's intelligence, but he 
acted like his enemy, the country farmer; 
when not able to carry the thread, he 
would neither seek help nor permit others 
to try their strength, and I regretted that 
there was no way of teaching him what 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 43 

suffering and environment had taught his 
city brother. Suffering is the school- 
master of birds and beasts, as well as men, 
and here is a little tale that may bolster 
my epigramatic declaration. A female 
sparrow had made her nest in a corner of 
the piazza for three years. She became 
very tame, and to a young member of my 
family a pet. Her food was put in a little 
plate in a sheltered portion of the porch 
and a dish for drinking and bath purposes. 
One night, in the presence of Leon, in 
conversation with an invalid lady, whose 
enthusiasm for the sparrow is contagion 
to the listener, I ventured to remark that 
I would add a sparrow to my aviary for 
the purpose of studying out leisurely the 
coming winter the many lovable qualities 
that my host declared they possessed. 
Leon, who was ever willing to please my 
slightest known fancy, while drawing up 
his nose at the lady's "talk," was bent on 



144 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

giving me a chance to satisfy my whim. 
Business called me from home for a few 
days, and on my return there was a 
female sparrow in my aviary. At the 
same time I was informed that little Kit 
had deserted the porch, and the young 
and fiery member of my family did not 
hesitate to couple my boy's name with the 
sparrow's disappearance. Reaching the 
aviary I found a sparrow incessantly flying 
from one end of the cage to the other, 
and in her fury driving the other occupants 
into a similar state. She had killed a 
couple of yellow-birds, the head of one 
of them showing conclusive evidence of 
her flesh devouring tendency. I had but 
to open the aviary door when Kit, as it 
proved to be, flew into an adjoining room 
and was speedily captured. Her struggles 
for freedom while in my hand were 
interesting to those who would study the 
pathetic fight a wild thing makes to escape 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 45 

man's possession. I had previously noticed 
and had been told that a sparrow kept 
around the porch since Kit's captivity, so 
to the porch I went and finding there a 
lonesome looking bird let Kit loose. I 
shall not readily forget what followed. 
Kit flew to the barn roof followed by 
this bird who proved to be Kit's husband. 

His delight knew no bounds ; he danced 
around her, spread his wings, proclaimed 
again and again his unabated and undying 
love, kissed her fervently a dozen times, 
preened her feathers and made the whole 
place ring with her welcome. 

All through this she showed that admir- 
able shyness which adds to female grace 
and loveliness. 

They arose at a low quick twitter of 
the male bird and proceeded to the nest, 
where three little birdies had long mourn- 
ed for their mother. Kit never again 
came to the porch. All our efforts to 



146 BIRDS AND BOOKS 

induce her to continue her old time ways 
were unsuccessful; suffering had taught 
her the reed-like quality of human friend- 
ship. My next experience was more 
pleasant. I found one morning on the 
lawn, a little after sunrise, a young male 
sparrow that had just left the nest. As 
he was in the way of the village cats I 
took pity on him and carried him to my 
study the better to attend to his wants. 
In a week's time he was picking, and all 
trouble being now over I gave him a 
cage and placed it bordering that of a 
German-canary, whose song I was desir- 
ous he should learn. In doing this I 
had little faith, I must confess, in the 
imitative qualities of the sparrow. The 
less hopes one has the more enthusiasm 
when these hopes are far surpassed. In 
dealing with birds, patience is the gold- 
en wand that brings so many unexpected 
things. The summer, autumn and winter 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 147 

passed without my sparrow showing the 
slightest sound uncommon to his race, 
and I had lost hope. Every morning I 
waited for a note, learned from the canary, 
and was disappointed with the sharp, re- 
sonant voice of an ordinary sparrow. 
With the coming of spring my house was 
filled with melody, and listening to it one 
afternoon near dusk, I thought I caught 
a beginner's song so easily known from 
its shortness and lack of strength. 

Next morning I put myself in position 
to watch, and to my surprise and, I need 
not add, my delight, I discovered that 
my sparrow was surely if slowly, mas- 
tering the canary's song. This unfolding 
of his imitative power went on day after 
day, growing richer and stronger until 
the pupil proved superior to the master. 
To-day, I value him beyond most birds in 
my aviary, and this valuation is based on 
his merits as a musician. To the canary's 



148 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

song he has added many notes, some orig- 
inal, others stolen, but so infused with 
his own manner and temperament as to 
make the song his own. He is like the 
poet who has drawn from many sources, 
but making them his own by stamping 
upon them an individuality. Captivity 
has not only given this bird a song, but 
an improved plumage. The grey has be- 
come softer, the white more brilliant, and 
the black of deeper lustre. Few, on first 
sight, would take him for an English spar- 
row; but he never forgets the race from 
whence he came, evident in his notes 
when a wild sparrow comes within hear- 
ing. He takes easy to petting, and 
shows an affection to his master only 
equalled by that of the gold-finch. He 
loves to bathe, to preen his feathers and 
keep himself neat and tidy. 

Another and greater love is for the 
sunshine, and I have taken care that this 



BIRDS AND fiOOKS. I49 

love shall have fullest indulgence. When 
the sun breaks out and fills the windows 
with his golden rays, life's elixir, and 
bathes the room with light and heat, the 
sparrow sings him a song of worship, and 
then spreading his wings, basks for hours 
in the blessed sunshine. If after one 
of these sun baths I open his cage 
door, he immediately flys to me. 

He is, in the words of Catullus, "A 
honeyed darling." 

There is a little street in Rome that to 
me is full of memories. It is called the 
San Sebastianello, and runs from the Piazza 
di Spagna to the Pincian. It is one of 
these little Roman streets that at first sight 
seems dull, dirty and commonplace, at 
least to an American traveler, but it grows 
day by day into your esteem, takes on 
new beauties and colors, until you are 
willing to admit that your first impressions 
were foolish, and in that New World hastq, 



150 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

whose opinions grate so harshly on 
European ears. "It was," says a writer, 
"the strolling place of Hawthorne," and 
I do not doubt his assertion. 

When he was making studies for his 
Marble Faun, it was only natural that he 
should take this near cut to the Pincian. 

No day passes without somebody of 
note walking in his footsteps. I have seen 
there a renowned German historian mut- 
tering to himself, what I took to be some 
wonderful discovery in early Roman 
History, for I was told, as a great secret, 
that the great man, at home or abroad, 
was ever in deep study, and that muttering 
was the sign board of some historical 
achievement. I have seen on its pavements 
an English poet, his long, black, glossy 
hair skillfully combed back, making him- 
self an object of attention and remark; 
an exiled cardinal sauntering leisurely, 
dreaming of his own land, I thought, and 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I 5 I 

troops of Roman students on their way to 
a little shrine further up the street, some 
in bright, others in sombre garb, but 
blending so artfully in their constant pass- 
ing and repassing as to fill the eye with 
refreshing color. And may I not add 
to these the horde of beggars, so fantastic- 
ally clad, that come thrice daily to the 
English Convent begging food with the 
most piteous appeals, and the most absurd 
gestures ? 

But not for those things do I cherish 
the San Sebastianello ; though memory, 
forgetting incidents of much more im- 
portance, clings tenaciously to these small 
scenes, but for a little ristorante on your 
right hand, on the way to the Pincian, three 
stone-flights up and then a turn to the 
left, kept by my most worthy friends, 
Giovanni and Catarina Rocco, brother 
and sister, the most charming couple I 
ever expect to meet in one house. They 



152 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

had seen better days, were once in opu- 
lence, but of those days not a word. 

As Giovanni, bless his old heart, used 
to say, "Our patrons don't care what we 
have been, our business is to please them, 
and that, signor, we really try to do ; our 
misfortunes are our own; strangers do not 
take kindly to them," and then he would 
graciously lift his little turban, bow and 
ask the signor's pleasure. I made it a 
point to be the last for meals, and as I had> 
through my love for Giovanni and Catarina 
brought a few customers to their table, my 
peculiarity in this respect was overlooked, 
and I could idle over my dinner, and have 
a chat with Giovanni now at leisure. He 
had been formerly in the diplomatic 
service and later proprietor of restaurants 
in Cairo and Constantinople, and his 
knowledge of the Orient was that of a 
born traveller and skilled observer. He 
possessed a w r onderful memory and that 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 53 

happy faculty of selection which never 
tires the listener, but constantly stimulates 
him by deftly changing scenes, color and 
atmosphere at the slightest prick of im- 
patience. Giovanni was a true Arabian 
story-teller. 

One afternoon he invited me to the 
kitchen to show me how scrupulously 
clean they were and that I might be able, 
as he said, "with a hearty conscience," to 
recommend his little ristorante to my 
friends. I pleaded that no visit was 
needed to urge me to interest my friends 
in patronizing the most home-like 
ristorante in Rome, but to no avail, so I 
put myself in Giovanni's hands and followed 
him and his sister to the kitchen, which 
bore satisfying proof of their cleanliness 
and tidiness. While my good hosts were 
explaining the different kinds of cookery, 
my eye, and I might truthfully add, my 
mind, was on a large cage that stood near 



154 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

the window. At my first opportunity I 
asked Giovanni what the cage was for. 

"Tell the signer,'' said Catarina, and 
then, woman-like, she continued, "my poor 
brother has had his weaknesses ; one of 
them was for all kinds of birds, and in 
those days he had what he wanted, we had 
money then, signor. Money can be made 
a great blessing. Giovanni has but a 
few Paddy birds in the cage ; why he 
keeps them I don't know, perhaps to make 
him think of the past and keep him sad." 

"But, Catarina," said I, "Giovanni never 
speaks of his trouble." 

"Ah, signor," said Catarina, with a sigh 
and a head shake, "you remember the pro- 
verb, I gran dolor i sono mutt." (Great 
griefs are silent), and with this saying she 
led the way. 

"This is the work of my odd moments," 
said Giovanni as I touched the most beau- 
tiful cage I have ever seen, a real bit of 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. m 155 

love and artistry. "It was done after the 
model of a Moslem mosque." 

The inside was most ingeniously con- 
trived. Here were sliding doors, brass- 
springs, that the bird by lighting on, found 
both feed and water, swings, perches and 
a magnificent bath that was filled or emp- 
tied at the touch of Giovanni's little finger. 
It had been built for the accommodation of 
forty birds and once held that number, 
but with death, and Giovanni's poverty, the 
worshippers dwindled down to two Java 
sparrows. It was my first sight of such 
birds, and my eyes at once betrayed to 
their master my interest and admiration, 
while his eyes in turn shot back at me his 
pleasure. His birds were very active. The 
moment his old, laughing face was pressed 
against the wires they came to the cage 
door, opened it by pulling with their bills 
a little blue ribbon, and flew to his arms 
making a rough noise as they did so. He 



156 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

had taught thern many amusing tricks such 
as dancing to his lilt, giving the foot at 
the word of command, and firing off a min- 
iature cannon. These tricks were a con- 
stant source of merriment to Giovanni, 
who would rub his hands in glee, and 
laugh until the tears trickled down his 
cheeks. Catarina at first objected to this 
exhibition, thinking that it might displease 
the foreigner and lessen his esteem for her 
brother, but learning that I, too, could find 
laughter and happiness in such little things, 
she allowed her own natural self to play 
the part and laughed with us. And it is, 
reader, on account of Giovanni and his 
tales, Catarina and the Java sparrows and 
all their tricks that the San Sebastianello 
lingers lovingly in my memory. 

In leaving Rome I vowed to own some 
day a Java sparrow, but years, and they 
fly so fast, went by before my vow be- 
came a fact. During some of those years 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I 57 

I had no home that I could call my 
own, and a man may not ride his hobbies 
in the homes of others, and even when I 
possessed a home I was kept from my vow 
by the threat of an ignorant bird-seller 
that Java sparrows would not live in my 
cold climate. 

This man and his likes have destroyed 
in me all respect for popular wisdom. 
And here I remark how little of your 
widely accepted wisdom will stand the 
test of an analysis. 

In Montreal one evening, as I was walk- 
ing at my leisure along the street that led 
to the station, from whence I was to take 
the train for home, I met a bird-vender, 
whose sole capital was a hen-canary, 
whom the rogue tried by much show ol 
reason and bogus science to make me be- 
lieve was a male, and a tailless, bald- 
headed Java sparrow which seemed to be, 
as the phrase goes, "on its last legs." Just 



158 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

then an Italian organ grinder across the 
street played an Italian air that I had 
often heard Giovanni whistle, and the bird 
and music appealing to my memory awoke 
the past that told of Giovanni, and for his 
sake I bought the bird and brought him 
home. There was loud laughter in my 
house, when I produced my new addition 
to the aviary, and the prophecy that night 
was that my Giovanni would be dead in 
the morning. I had to submit to a lec- 
ture on my foolishness and the ease with 
which a bird or book-vender could empty 
my pockets. One audacious member of 
the household informed me that I should 
have a guardian appointed to deliver me 
from such sharpers. I was so put out by 
their sinister warnings and dogmatic pro- 
phecies, that I arose three times during 
the night to have a look at my sparrow, 
returning each time more convinced that 
he would live to give the lie to warnings 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 159 

and prophecy, a text ever after, with which 
I could silence my wise household. Morn- 
ing came and Giovanni, aroused from his 
stupor, hopped to the seed-dish and with 
much spirit and dash gave battle to every 
bird that approached it, uttering a croak- 
ing sound. # 

"No fear of that bird dying," said my 
household. "Consistency/' says Emerson, 
"is the bugbear of little minds." I am 
proving nothing when I remark that 
consistency is not to be found in my 
household. Giovanni, on account of old 
memories and his bravery in living in the 
face of so much harsh comment, won my 
heart and he was petted and feasted above 
all his companions. No bird can relish 
attention more than a Java sparrow. He 
takes to kindness as readily as a cat to milk 
or a dog to bones, and like them his taste 
never varies. The old proverb about kill- 
ing with kindness has its exception in the 



160 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

Java sparrow. Giovanni cast aside his torn 
coat, grew fat, put on another garb as 
tight-fitting as a new kid glove. In mat- 
ters of taste in dress he is easily the prince. 
I know that other birds have finer and 
more beautiful clothes, but none wear them 
so neatly nor look so well in them as this 
Beau Brummel. Let me describe him as 
he walks across the room picking his every 
step, an acknowledged weakness of every 
dandy. He is a little larger than our 
ordinary sparrow, built after the bull-finch 
style. He has a thick beak of a rose color 
hue that gives the head a canny appear-, 
ance. It seems much too large, but as 
nature does not generally make mistakes 
I am willing to admit that it is just the 
thing he needs. 

The body is of soft gray, so smooth and 
neat that at first sight it seems to be but 
covered with one feather, the head and 
throat are black, and the cheeks pure 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. l6l 

white. With all this finery and style 
Giovanni carries a courage that is almost 
beyond belief. Arouse his spirit as so 
many of the birds do by sneering at his 
clothes, and he will fight, and with a 
pluck and push that the detractors cannot 
contend against. I have seem him attack 
the parrot for a dish of hempseed, and 
knowing that his motto was death but no 
surrender, I stopped the fight after the 
first engagement, much, I must admit, to 
Polly's disgust. His manner of bathing 
is most peculiar ; when the bobolink enters 
the bath, a circular tin basin, Giovanni sits 
on the edge of it while Bobby spatters him 
with water. After his bath he takes his 
sleep which often lasts a couple of hours, 
and woe to the bird that breaks in on his 
dreams, for I am firmly convinced that 
birds do dream. He cannot sing, neither 
can I, as I once found out to my cost, so 
how can I blame him, but he has gifts that 



l62 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

atone for this loss. He is a brave, manly, 
social, funny, little fellow, my Giovanni, 
and much as I admire music, these charac- 
teristics are still dearer to me. 

In walking some years ago through an 
unattractive part of Washington, strolling 
without any definite purpose, as is my 
wont in large cities, I was brought to 
stop in front of a wooden structure digni- 
fied by the name house, but bearing little 
resemblance to what ordinarily fits that 
word, by the marvellous song of a bird. 

In front of the door sat an old negress, 
wrinkled and grizzled, humming some 
ditty that suffering had crushed from her 
race. She seemed pleased at my inter- 
est in her pet, and looking up from her 
needle-work, accosted me with one of those 
broad smiles that in reality are little laughs. 

"Plays his throat pretty nicely/' said 
the old dame, as her eyes sought the ob- 
ject of her speech. "He is just as you 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 63 

see him every hour of the day ; that throat 
is always busy." 

Taking an empty soap box that lay 
near at hand, I turned it up on its ends 
and all unbidden, but not unwelcome, I 
took my seat to gossip a while and hear 
music that brought, as no other music 
could, many memories of long lost days — 
those days of the Barmecides, when youth 
was strong, and laughter loving, and gor- 
geous dreams the only spinning of the 
brain. Ah ! those merry days when I 
wandered where fancy drove me, the pres- 
ent blown away with an idle day, the 
future full of grand designs and lordly 
actions. 

What boots it for some frontless crea- 
ture, who calls himself a philosopher and 
rounds his life in a system, to tell me 
that I was vagabondizing in those days, 
gathering wool, building castles in Spain 
and a variety of epithets which seem to 



164 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

mean much and mean nothing ! I should 
sneer at his system and tell him that the 
only time in life that I have been a phil- 
osopher was in those very days, for then 
was I content with myself and my sur- 
roundings, and by this means found a 
happiness, whose loss has ever since been 
my quest. And any picture of those days 
would be wanting in accuracy had it not 
a word of the mocking bird. My wander- 
ings lay in the South, from Kentucky to 
Old Mexico, and the South is the home, 
the landscape of this bird. Here he is 
the regal master of the grove, the wood- 
land, the orchard and the straggling hedge. 
In the most unexpected places, in the 
most unfrequented nooks and corners, 
his tantalizing throat raises you at one 
moment to the skies, at another reminds 
you that your feet are still planted on 
mother earth, and that some of her chil- 
dren are near you. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 65 

He has, as no other bird I know of, the 
power of imitating his atmosphere. I 
often watched one of these birds, whose 
favorite seat was the highest branch of a 
tall tree. I could recognize him by the 
band of white on his wings before the con- 
cert began. His first notes were scarcely 
audible, and had I not known the rogue 
I would have wagered a bet that they were 
those of the blue bird, and what would 
have been my feeling when these notes 
were immediately followed by the mellow 
whistle of the cardinal. After these de- 
ceptions he would leave mimicry aside 
and for an hour pipe his own exquisite, 
natural song, and then as if inspired by 
some evil spirit turn in a moment the tune, 
and give in quick succession a whole series 
of diabolical utterances. The spirit min- 
strel had become a barnyard comedian. 

A young poet who was my companion 
in those philosophic, rambling days, (he 



1 66 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

is now a lawyer, the poet dead in him, and 
conventionality where wisdom once held 
sway), suggested that we should find the 
nest of this finished warbler, and, like true 
philosophers, rear the young, albeit we, 
ourselves, could boast of no permanent 
home. Youth, I love you for your con- 
tempt of that miserable, cautious old fel- 
low, Experience, who bothers the life out 
of age and keeps men from performing 
many a noble action by his easy-tongued 
warnings from the past. So the poet and 
I watched the movements of the bird, with 
malice prepense, heard his song, while we 
planned his captivity, if opportunity came, 
and that of his helpless children. That 
which we most admired and most praised 
had wrought his ruin. It was a story with 
which history is conversant from the days 
of Homer to our own time. The gifts of 
the gods bring death as often as glory. 
After much observation and careful search- 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 167 

ing the nest was discovered a few rods 
from its favorite tree, and on our approach- 
ing it the female rose, perched above it, 
uttering cries of distress, which brought 
the male at once to her assistance. Their 
boldness and bravery I have never seen 
equalled ; they kept near their nest and 
disputed every inch of ground with us. 
We found in the nest three fledglings that 
showed a depth of yellow mouth the mo- 
ment our fingers touched their rather 
loosely built abode. 

No sooner had we withdrawn, than the 
male, seeing his spouse quietly seated on 
her brood, betook himself to his accus- 
tomed place and poured out his thanks to 
his guardian deity with that full, free and 
fervor-tipped note which is the privilege 
of liberty, whether in man or bird. 

As we sat entranced by this teeming 
melody, the poet repeated the lines of 
Rodman Drake, and they catch as near 



1 68 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

as poetry can the mocking bird's song: 

" Soft and low the song began : 
I scarcely caught it as it ran 
Through the melancholy trill 
Of the plaintive whip-poor-will, — 
Through the ringdove's gentle wail, 
Chattering jay and whistling quail, 
Sparrow's twitter, cat-bird's cry, 
Red bird's whistle, robin's sigh ; 
Black bird, blue bird, swallow, lark, 
Each his native note might mark. 

" Oft he tried the lesson o'er, 
Each time louder than before ; 
Burst at length the finished song, — 
Loud and clear it poured along ; 
All the choir in silence heard, 
Hushed before this wondrous bird ; 
All transported and amazed, 
Scarcely breathing, long I gazed. 

"Now it reached the loudest swell, 
Lower, lower, now it fell, — 
Lower, lower, lower, still, 
Scarce it sounded o'er the rill. 
Now the warbler ceased to sing, 
Then he spread his russet wing, 
And I saw him take his flight 
Other regions to delight." 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 69 

"I would not have the heart to take 
those birds," said the poet, after finishing 
his quotation and meditating a few min- 
utes in silence, "it would be criminal, like 
thieving from heaven." My dignified 
friend the lawyer who in these days laughs 
at my "bird hobbies," was in those times 
both poet and philosopher, and in his 
speech is the proof. He has fallen from 
his high estate to be one of the struggling, 
discontented crowd. He is an illustration 
to the saying of St. Beuve, "that every 
man carries within him a dead poet." 

And as I sat on the edge of the soap 
box, memories as the above thronged 
my mind, and the old dame noting 
my mood fell also to dreaming, and 
there we sat, trying to gather together 
a few threads of the vanished past. "If 
I only had a better cage for him," said 
the negress as she roused me from my 
dreaming, "he would look much better, 



170 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

and be more at home. He is a Virginy 
bird ; my brother's son brought him 
here ; he's for sale, Mister, you seem to 
be taken with him." The old lady had 
spoken the truth ; I was certainly in 
love with the bird, but there were many 
obstacles to circumvent any desire I had 
to possess her pet. I was on a lecture 
tour, the most undesirable of occupations, 
and although I had many friends in Wash- 
ington I did not wish to trouble them with 
the keeping and shipping of a bird, so 
with many flattering phrases in praise of 
her pet, and with some sorrow for not 
being able to make the purchase, I rose 
from my improvised seat, bade the ne- 
gress good-bye, taking care at the next 
corner to make a memorandum of the 
name of the street and the exact location 
of the curious little house. Why did I do 
this? 

I could not then nor now adduce a 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 171 

reason. A few months after, while en- 
tertaining a bird-lover, who was on his 
way to Washington, I told him of my ex- 
perience there and gave him the note I 
had made. 

A month after his departure Leon came 
running to my room, his eyes kindling 
with fire, his whole body swaying with 
passionate delight, holding in his hand a 
bird cage, followed by my curious and 
impatient household. The tramping of 
feet and the barking of dogs had told me 
that something unusual had happened. 
I had no time to question Leon, for with 
his entrance he shouted, dancing with joy, 
"A new bird, a new bird, just got him at 
the express office. He's come from away 
off, and the expressman says he can sing 
more in an hour than all the birds you 
have in your house could do in a year." 

With "the bird came a letter telling of 
the joy it gave my friend to visit the old 



172 BIRDS AND BOOKS 

negress who thought me "a very absent- 
minded man," and to purchase at a cost 
of two dollars her mocking-bird. He 
playfully added that "the cage went with 
the bird, but he did not dare to send the 
bird in such bad company." 

The long journey and the change of 
climate kept the bird sulky and gloomy 
for over three months, to Leon's disgust 
and disrespect for the expressman's wis- 
dom. But on a Sunday afternoon, as I 
sat reading a volume of Dr. Newman's 
musical prose, I was made glad by the 
mocking-bird's voice. We had been feed- 
ing him on a well-loved dish, meal-worm 
grubs, and he could no longer be angry 
with us, seeing our attentions. 

Since then his song has been constant, 
his mimicry unsurpassed. He is Leon's 
pet and this means the best of care. I 
confess at times he is a little disturbing, 
but then that is but one side of his nature. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 73 

and there is nobody without flaws. 
"Madame," says the villain in the novel, 
apologizing for himself, "there are spots 
in the sun." 

I have here and there in these pages 
spoken of a grayfinch in terms anything 
but complimentary, nor am I now going to 
make an apology. My desire is rather to 
make him better known, and by doing so 
prove that I have in no way libelled him. 

And I shall begin his history by a frank 
statement of how he came into my posses- 
sion. A frknd had sent me Views and 
Reviews by Mr. Henley, since a great 
favorite of mine, a saucy, strong, pungent 
book of criticism, with the request that I 
should read it at once and send him my 
thoughts as to its merit. Now I sat in my 
library, doing this at my friend's biddance, 
when Leon entered, and without more ado 
made me acquainted with his mind. 

"I thought the doctor told you not to 



174 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

sit too steady at your desk. This is a fine 
day, and you can read just as well in the 
fields as in here. It is a good day for 
trapping, and if you want I will hitch Molly 
(our favorite pony) and take the dogs 
along, and go where there are lots of birds. " 
A peculiarity of Leon's mind was that it 
had to empty itself before asking an an- 
swer. 

It was one of those minds that cling 
tenaciously to a subject, until it is either 
satisfied or tickled with something new, 
I heard the boy with some impatience as 
my interest was just then in what Mr. Hen- 
ley was saying of Matthew Arnold: 

"For the present is a noisy and affected 
age ; it is given overmuch to clamorous 
devotion and extravagant repudiation ; 
there is an element of swagger in all its 
words and ways; it has a distressing and 
immoral turn for publicity. Matthew 
Arnold's function was to protest against its 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 75 

fashions by his own intellectual practise, 
and now and then to take it to task and 
call it to order. " Leon knew my ways and 
waited until I had put a mark in the book, 
closed it, and rising hid it in my pocket, 
then merriment seized his feet and laughter 
lit his eyes. 

"The pony will be ready in a few min- 
utes, " he cried, as he hurried down the 
stairs. In less than half an hour we were 
on our way, and here follows in the manner 
of the olden time, a truthful reckon of our 
cavalcade. Leon was the driver. I sat 
beside him with a trap cage and yellow- 
bird decoy. In the well of the buggy were 
wicker cages for our captives. At our feet 
lay Jack, a champion fox-terrier and a 
most conceited dandy, jealous of the slight- 
est attention paid to his fellows. Some- 
times in front of the buggy, frolicking 
sometimes behind it were the two great 
Danes of noble ancestry and lordly mien> 



176 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

Caesar and Juno, and the suave and decor- 
ous St. Bernards, Helen of Troy, and Pom- 
pey of Rome. No wonder that the way- 
farers stopped to have a sight at such a 
curious spectacle. But on we went 
unmindful of the stupid gaze or the com- 
ments of heavy, dull tongues, Leon con- 
juring up dreams of the birds that were 
eagerly waiting our coming to enter the 
trap, while I was equally wool-gathering, 
even if I thought the wool of better quality. 
Arriving at a green country lane, edged 
with golden-rod, daisies, and here and 
there a shy violet, we turned in and after a 
few miles came to a large meadow that 
bordered on the river. Turning the pony 
loose to graze at her will, we set out to 
select a suitable place for our trap, as well 
as a covert for ourselves. Here I had 
better remark, lest I scandalize some reader, 
that we had the permission of the owner 
of the meadow to give Molly her liberty. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 177 

In one corner of the field we found a 
little grove, which suited all our purposes. 
It had a stream of cool, fresh water run- 
ning through it with here and there many 
a cozy nook fit for lithe-limbed Adonis to 
sleep in. I sought one of these, leaving 
the bird-trapping and luncheon-making to 
my indefatigable boy who was as surely 
born for life in the open as the chipmunk 
that hurried over the rickety fence with 
winning grace, or the birds that sang over 
his head. The cool grass, the pleasant 
breeze, the maples' shade, the brook's 
song, the birds' music, and the charm of 
the place all lulled me to soft, refreshing 
sleep, and Leon, hearing the doctor remark 
how necessary it was for me, kept rule and 
silence among the dogs, allowing me to 
wake up naturally. 

As I did so he accosted me with a smile 
that I had learned to associate with victory. 
I needed no voice to tell me that the liberty 



178 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

of some captive was in his keeping. But 
his story I had to hear ; it was part of the 
triumph. I prefer his own boyish way of 
telling to any art-setting that I could give 
it. 

"Didn't I tell you that there were lots of 
birds here." (He thought he held the 
proof in his hands.) "Just as soon as you 
went asleep I set my trap, and, in less time 
than I can tell you, there were a dozen 
birds flying around it, but this fellow 
(meaning the bird he held in his hand) 
drove them all away and nearly killed the 
decoy. Just as soon as a bird would come 
near the cage, he became a regular lunatic, 
bobbing up and down his head, spreading 
out his wings, and jumping all over the 
trap." 

"But how did you take him?" I asked, 
breaking in on the excited boy's graphic 
tale. Then flashed his eyes. I had brought 
him to that part of the story which re- 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 79 

counts his own glory, by all means to him 
the most interesting part. "I drove him 
away," continued the boy, "more than 
twenty times, so I gave him more chances 
than he deserved. At last I could stand 
him no longer, every time he went away 
he came back bolder, so I sat down and 
began to think what I could do with him. 
Then a thought came to me all at once. I 
went and put the decoy into one part of 
the trap, sprung it and left the other part 
open for his Highness," and the boy gazed 
in triumph on his captive and laughed 
until the tears came prompted, no doubt, 
by an admiration of his own cleverness. 
"As soon as this was done, back he comes, 
and seeing no bird in the under part of the 
cage he flew on the trap door and, in 
his love for a fight with the other 
bird, went in. He fought like a Trojan 
before I could get him out." Leon was 
the boastful possessor of not a few classical 



180 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

phrases which he had learned on his 
rambles with me. He associated with 
the name Trojan, the highest compliment 
he could pay to brawn and grit. I 
brought the bird home, and put him in a 
large cage that contained finches, Java 
sparrows, yellow-birds and bobolinks. In 
the morning, on entering my study, I was 
surprised to see him thoroughly at home. 
In a week he was so tame or bold, which 
I know not, that he ate out of the seed 
dish while I filled it, and now and then 
pecked violently at my fingers. From 
this time henceforward his conduct be- 
came unparalleled in my long experience 
with cage-birds. He is the most powerful 
bird of his kind I have seen, his legs being 
larger, stronger by far than ordinary, and 
his claws short and thick. 

He made up his mind that the seed-dish 
and water pot were there for his own pri- 
vate use, and acted accordingly. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. l8l 

From early morning until dark he kept 
up a continual warfare, chasing and beat- 
ing every bird that dared to eat or drink. 

To one of the bobolinks he took such 
an aversion that he would follow him for 
hours, emitting a low, hissing sound. When 
he came within his reach he set to work 
to pluck him in the most cruel manner, 
and his delight after one of these battles 
was very evident. He would sit on the 
perch, spread his wings, erect his tail 
feathers, shake his head and make a strange 
and indescribable noise. On several oc- 
casions he became so frenzied that he 
fell from his perch and rolled in the bot- 
tom of the cage. I was constrained to 
give him the liberty of the room, but here 
again his fighting propensities made 
trouble. He spent his days in flying from 
cage to cage challenging the occupants to 
combat. A chipping sparrow that would 
not remain in the cage and was easily able 



1 82 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

to pass out of any cage I possess, was so 
abused and driven around by this grayfinch 
that it would pass the day on the edge of 
my waste-basket, its only place of safety 
from his rude assaults. I put this chippy 
in the cage and so thoroughly had he pes- 
tered it, that to this day it has not made the 
slightest attempt to escape. Liberty can 
be made oppressive as well as captivity. 

This bird has, to use the words of a 
friend, "some marked peculiarities ;" one 
of them is the manner of his bathing. He 
does not, according to bird custom, pass 
half an hour away fooling with the water, 
but like a veteran swimmer boldly plunges 
into the basin and strikes out with head 
and claws. My presence makes no dif- 
ference, in fact he rather enjoys it, as it 
generally means a few hempseed, of which 
he is passionately fond, and for which he 
counts no efforts too great. 

As an amusement I have given him a 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 83 

few seeds, then went to a cage and 
deposited some there, which he was quick 
to note. As soon as he had greedily 
eaten his own portion he would fly to the 
cage and try, by the most absurd and 
laughable means, to obtain what had been 
given to his fellows and, baulked in this at- 
tempt, return to me as if begging for more. 
His memory is excellent, a statement 
which is proven by many tests I have 
made. He has found his way from the 
kitchen up stairs to my study on various 
occasions, knows his cage and the manner 
of opening the door, and after six months' 
separation from his old enemy, the bobo- 
link, is as willing as ever to begin the 
attack. I have placed him in a stout cage, 
where he lazily perches the most of the 
day as if he were in a sort of stupor. To 
give him both amusement and exercise I 
devote odd moments, and my manner is 
to put my finger in the cage which he 



1 84 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

resents with all his might, biting so vicious- 
ly at times as to puncture the skin. 

As soon as spring comes and covers the 
earth with bloom, I shall carry back the 
grayfinch to his haunts and there restore 
him to that liberty his rascality has earned. 

I once had the pleasure of witnessing 
from my study window an interesting and 
practically harmless fight between a chip- 
py and a yellowbird. I had been in the 
custom of scattering canary seed from 
this window to help a pair of yellowbirds 
whose nest in an apple tree was almost 
within my reach. These yellowbirds paid, 
I am bound to confess, but little heed to 
my generosity, preferring seeds gathered 
by their own industry, an industry that 
has little cessation. 

Occasionally they would drop from 
the apple tree, pick a few seeds, and then 
disappear with that jerky flight of theirs, 
which has always seemed to me to be 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 85' 

more of the nature of a jump. It was on 
one of these occasions that they were 
honoring me by picking up a few of the 
scattered seeds, that a chippy sparrow, 
and his shabbily dressed wife, came along ; 
and eying the lavish display of food, whis- 
pered to his wife that they had better 
alight and make a meal. No sooner had 
they done so than I noticed that they 
were congratulating each other on their 
good luck in finding such a sumptuous 
banquet spread for their convenience. 

This mode of congratulating I have of- 
ten witnessed. It consists in a kind of 
dance-hop, accompanied with an agree- 
able chirrup. To this mystic rite the 
male yellowbird, resplendent in perfect 
coloring, objected, and I could see that 
his mate was urging him to combat. I 
had been reading, a few hours before, a 
tale of a richly clad knight and a home- 
ly dressed serf, and in the tale the serf, 



1 86 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

scared of the knight's glitter, had run 
away without striking a blow. "Here," 
thought I, "is the knight and the serf. 
Will my plain coated chippy, who is ordi- 
narily an easy going fellow, dare withstand 
the pugnacious yellowbird?" 

But he did, and even more, he met him 
Tialf-vvay and put himself in the attitude 
of defence by squatting low, spreading 
his wings and giving his battle cry. The 
yellowbird, on seeing this unlooked for 
valor, advanced more cautiously and played 
for position. While he was doing so 
the female chippy, impatient of all these 
tactics, attacked the yellowbird from the 
rear, while her husband now boldly ad- 
vanced in front and, after a few seconds 
of vigorous pecking and angry talk, the 
crestfallen knight and his lady found ref- 
uge and peace among the lettuce leaves. 
The pair having by right of conquest 
gained possession of the seed patch, under 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 87 

my window, very human like made up 
their minds that they would hold it, and, 
though I am no imperialist, I could not 
but admire the courage that could take 
such a resolution. For I here remind the 
reader, that a few yards from the chippy 
kingdom lay a land, colonized and inhabit- 
ed by English sparrows, whose looting 
forays extended over the whole neigh- 
borhood. The chippies were not long 
in finding out that these marauders would 
contest their right of sovereignty and do 
so in thoroughly warlike manner. One 
morning as the chippies were feeding on 
a few crumbs, one of these wandering 
soldiers came to the preserve, scanned it 
eagerly, flew away and soon returned 
with the rest of the army, which, on 
alighting, commenced a war that could 
have but one issue, the d£ath or captivity 
of the chippies. There was but one way 
to save the hardy little fellows, and that 



1 88 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

was by placing them under Leon's pro- 
tection. Leon hated cordially the Eng- 
lish sparrows and in his own words for 
this reason that "he cannot behave him- 
self while the other birds are around." 
Of the truth of this assertion I oftentimes 
have been a witness. When a bird "after 
fooling around a trap for an hour,'' was 
about to enter, to the great joy of my an- 
xious boy, a sparrow would drive him off 
with a noisy twitter, a very song of defiance 
hurled into Leon's teeth. I remember 
one instance of this which was very laugh- 
able. An English linnet, a cage bird of 
many years, through the carelessness of 
the boy, escaped one winter day. 

Knowing that it could find no food, as 
the ground was covered with snow, I put 
the trap in the garden, baited it with seed 
and left it under Leon's supervision, who 
was not a little mortified at his blunder. 
The linnet joined a band of sparrows, the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 1 89 

only birds to be met with at this season 
of the year. I was glad at this, as I 
thought that their curiosity would lead 
the linnet to the trap and possibly to its 
capture. I was not mistaken. First one 
sparrow came and examined, then another, 
until finally, the whole flock, and with 
them their guest, were busy picking up the 
stray seed and fluttering around the cage. 
The sparrow's ideas of hostship falls short 
of giving food to his guests, and the linnet 
noticing this and, moreover, being hungry, 
thought he would help himself from the 
dish within the cage, but every movement 
he made to accomplish this feat was foiled 
by the sparrows. They jostled him, pecked 
him, and in every way possible prevented 
him from entering captivity. To take 
one of them in a trap was never in my 
mind. They are too cunning. Civili- 
zation has made them artful. I was watch- 
ing my boy's face whereon the mind was 



190 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

playing, and it took no deep study to read 
the message. Suddenly he picked up a 
piece of cinder, knit his brow, half closed 
his eyes, and with all the power and deft- 
ness of his right hand sent it among his 
enemies. The sparrows rose and flew 
away, twittering in their flight their con- 
tempt, but, strange to say, the linnet, pos- 
sibly tired of bad company, remained, and 
a few minutes after entered the trap. 
"I have had to shiver here for an hour all 
on account of those sparrows, I hate them, 
now. I'll kill every one of them," was 
the boy's blood-thirsty speech as he bore 
back to the house the escaped linnet. 
Now the chippies were safe under the 
protection of such a good hater of their 
enemies as Leon, and they seemed to know 
this for they at once began to build in 
the vines of the piazza. Their nest was 
so located that I could, from my study 
window, watch its building, and I can now 



BIRDS AND BOOKS 191 

recall what pleasure a pair of chippies 
brought to me those long, summer days 
when ill health confined me to my rooms. 
The male and female were constantly busy 
gathering grass and horse hair. 

The grass was found on the lawn where 
I had a few handfuls brought long and 
soft; the horse hair from the barnyard, 
our pet pony supplying that commodity. 

I was, during the building process, 
amused by an unseemly chatter between 
the husband and wife. After one of 
these chattering spells the husband would 
fly off, while his mate kept on building, 
apparently more content with his absence 
than his presence. 

My opinion of their quarrel was this, 
that the male bird threw out some sug- 
gestions on nest-building which he wished 
to put in effect, whereon his mate took 
offence, and, woman-like, used her tongue, 
her organ of defence, to down the husband 



192 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

The quarrel, if I am correct in calling it 
so, did not last long, not more than a few 
minutes, when the male returned with a 
horse hair which he deposited humbly at 
his mistress' feet, then they kissed and 
made up, giving, as I often thought, a 
very sensible lesson to many a foolish 
human family within my knowledge. As 
soon as the nest was completed and accept- 
ed as a fit abode for Mrs. Chippy's coming 
family, there came a silence that aston- 
ished me. The male bird became more 
grave, and the female bird seldom appeared. 
I was anxious to find out the cause of all 
this quiet, in such demonstrative birds, so, 
risking the doctor's prophecy, I visited the 
nest and found Mrs. Chippy sitting com- 
fortably on three pretty blue eggs with 
little black dots on their larger ends. She 
paid little heed to my presence, it was 
only when I reached out my hand to the 
nest, that she betrayed emotion and took 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 193 

to flight. She returned in a few minutes 
and assumed her patient position. My 
next visit was when the birdies had 
been hatched about a week. Their mother 
this time showed more anxiety. The 
birdies, little funny balls, at my "tweet 
tweet" opened their depth of yellow 
mouths asking for food, in which Leon, 
unaccustomed to the finer shades of 
speech, remarked that they were all 
mouth and skin. 

One thing I noted was her disinclination 
to seed during the nursing period. As far 
as my observations could detect, her food 
consisted in worms and grubs of various 
kinds. I had some meat cut, torn in 
shreds, and placed near the nest to tempt 
Mrs. Chippy's appetite, and if I succeeded 
thereby giving her, as I thought, a much 
needed rest, and my plan was successful. 
Both birds became my guests. After 
their brood was reared and had taken 



194 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

their departure, I took in the trap their 
parents and transferred them to my small 
aviary which stands on a table near my 
desk in order to note their lives in captiv- 
ity. They became at once contented and 
exceedingly social, spending their time in 
the bottom of the cage rather than on the 
perches. They bathe three or four times 
a day, in the most gentle way, sitting on 
the edge of the dish, and throwing the 
water over their bodies. I have been 
unable to detect in the male bird any fur- 
ther capability for song other than the 
chippering that has given him a name. 

An enthusiastic bird lover who has had 
many years' experience with our common 
birds as caged companions, tells me that 
the chippy, under a master, develops 
a song much as the English sparrow 
does ; if so I live in hopes that some 
fine morning Mr. Chippy will favor me 
with a tune. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 195 

A few years ago when on a visit to 
Montreal I purchased a little paper-covered 
book at the cost of five cents. It was a 
Scotch edition of John Burroughs Winter 
Sunshine, and to this book I owe my first 
interest in the crow. Burroughs is a keen 
and kindly observer of Nature. His writ- 
ings in this line have been a source of 
great enjoyment to me. It is to be re- 
gretted that he does not keep within his 
limitations where he is a charming in- 
structor, but must meddle with literary 
criticism. 

Thank heaven, no reader these days 
can be made to take his reading by pre- 
scription, so I can confine myself as I do 
to Mr. Burroughs delights, and they are 
enough to satisfy any ordinary demand. 
In Canada, as in Europe, there are first 
and second class railway coaches. 

My idea in purchasing the book was to 
have some reading matter in case I could 



196 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

not make an acquaintance with some of 
my travelling companions. I always ride 
in the second class coach, not so much 
for the difference in fare, as for the ease 
with which a chat may be had with the 
class of society that travels in these 
coaches. 

Society in a first class coach is distant, 
dull, and listless, so much given to intro- 
spection, that there is neither time nor 
a desire for conversation. Now in a second 
class coach this is all changed, the work- 
men's brains are active and their tongues 
communicative. They put forth their 
ideas with dash and spirit, fight for them 
vigorously, and prop them with illustra- 
tions draw r n from their lives that are 
both clever and striking. 

In a first class coach you are supposed 
to give information if you carry on a 
conversation, in a second class you will 
receive knowledge, and if you are a believer 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 197 

in the masses, as the present writer, you 
will receive sustenance for your belief. So 
taking my little book, I entered a second 
class coach on my way home finding there- 
in an American iron-moulder who gave 
me the half of his seat with an eagerness 
that showed his sense of fellowship. I was 
sorry when he left me, the only occupant 
of the car, an hour later, for his talk was 
shrewd and sensible. It was then I threw 
myself into an easy attitude and dipped 
into Winter Sunshine, Here are a few 
passages which I read over and over again, 
and to them must be attributed the passion- 
ate desire that awoke within my breast of 
owning a crow: "The crow may not 
have the sweet voice which the fox in his 
flattery attributed to him, but he has a 
good, strong, native speech, nevertheless. 
How much character there is in it ! How 
much thrift and independence ! Of course 
his plumage is firm, his color decided, his 
wit quick. 



198 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

"He understands you at once and tells 
you so ; so does the hawk by his scorn- 
ful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy 
outlaws, the crows, how I love them ! 
Alert, social republicans, always able to 
look out for themselves, not afraid of the 
cold and the snow, fishing when flesh is 
scarce, and stealing when other resources 
fail, the crow is a character I would not 
willingly miss from the landscape. I love 
to see his track in the snow or the mud, 
and his graceful pedestrianism about the 
brown fields. 

"He is no interloper, but has the air 
and manner of being thoroughly at home, 
and in rightful possession of the land. 
He is no sentimentalist like some of the 
plaining, disconsolate song-birds, but 
apparently is always in good health and 
good spirits. No matter who is sick, or 
dejected, or unsatisfied, or what the 
weather is, or what the price of corn, the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. I99 

crow is well and finds life sweet. He is 
the dusky embodiment of worldly wisdom 
and prudence. " A few days after my re- 
turn home, while driving in the country, 
I came to a log cabin, and on the rickety 
slab fence in front of the door, saw a crow, 
his master, a dirty-faced, half-clad-boy, 
lying in the grass, and holding a string 
attached to the crow's leg. The boy, as 
he watched the crow's efforts to escape, 
laughed as only a boy can. 

His laughter made merry my approach. 
"What will you take for your crow?" I 
asked, as I stopped the pony. 

"How much do you think he is worth?" 
retorted the youngster, tightening the 
string on his victim. 

"Set your own price, " I replied, as I 
jumped from the buggy and went to meet 
him. As I did so he arose, seized his 
crow, yelled viciously and ran into the 
house. His yelling brought his father 



200 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

from the fields, and I became heartily- 
sorry for my crow enthusiasm. A little 
explanation, however, made things right, 
and the boy, who thought me a policeman, 
was calmed and brought out to dicker 
with me. I told the father that unless the 
boy, of his own accord, desired to part 
with his pet, I could not countenance a 
bargain. I should not buy my pleasures 
with children's tears. 

The boy with a little more confidence 
told me that he wanted to sell his crow, 
if he could get a pair of pigeons in its 
place, and the mother added that he was 
in more need of clothes, a motherly and 
truthful remark. As I wanted the crow I 
satisfied both mother and son, and drove 
home as pleased as a child carrying a 
toy. Betimes how little it takes to 
please us ! My household had been 
taught, by years of experience, that their 
objections to my pets must not go beyond 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 201 

a protest, and I narrate here for the 
comfort of those who intend to keep pets 
that the power of protest was exercised on 
every possible occasion. After the pro- 
test, of which I heard but a few words, I 
committed my crow to my housekeeper's 
keeping, much against that functionary's 
will, called him "Major," and gave him the 
range of the kitchen. To keep him with- 
in control and not to exhaust the house- 
keeper's patience by breaking dishes and 
jumping on tables, I clipped his wing. 
The lad had told me that his diet had 
been bread and potatoes, but I noticed 
that he had a strong desire for meat,' and 
being allowed to satisfy this desire he 
evinced a decided distaste to his former 
food. His taming was a very simple 
process, in truth, I take no credit in it, 
for Major became tame of his own accord., . 
By the time his wing grew he had become 
a part of my household and I had no fear 
of his flying away. 



202 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

His first companionship was with a few 
imported tumbler pigeons among whom 
he strutted with dignity and authority. 
Later this companionship grew broader 
and embraced a fox-terrier, two great 
Danes, two St. Bernards and a neighbor's 
maltese cat. Cats find no place in my 
"household, for they are incapable of 
personal attachment. I know there are 
those to whom this statement will 
be rank heresy, but a little thought 
given to the subject will convince the most 
sceptical that a cat's first love is for the 
house, and that a family may move out 
and a new family move in without the cat's 
regret, provided she is w r ell fed. Compare 
her to the dog who would rather follow 
his master on a crust than live in luxury 
without him. I had reared a spaniel and 
after a few years gave him to a family that 
loved him and treated him accordingly. 
He had not seen me in two vears, but 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 203 

when we met his joy knew no bounds, 
and during my stay he was always at my 
heels. When I went away his master 
wrote that he was inconsolable. 

Major developed for me something like 
this spaniel's attachment. He would fol- 
low me all over town until he was as well 
known a figure on the street as I was. 
He loved noise and made his way to it as 
quick as his wings bore him. Following 
this oddity he was to be found perched on 
a dwarf maple during the children's play- 
time shouting, "Hillo quick," the only 
words I was able to teach him. And the 
children gave him no annoyance for he 
was, in a sense, their pet as well as mine. 
They divided their lunches, giving him 
the tidbits, well pleased when he conde- 
scended to dine with them. Day after day 
he extended his rambles until he might be 
met with in every nook and corner of the 
village and without the slightest fear for 



204 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

his personal safety. His one weakness 
was society, he could not bear to be alone. 

From having had a parrot who was 
very fond of being teased and played 
with, and having witnessed play as a part 
of the daily life of wild birds I began my 
experiments with Major by tickling him 
with a feather, then throwing him on 
his back and catching hold of his feet, 
scratching his head and similar tricks 
to which he responded with a purring 
sound, giving the most direct evidence of 
his pleasure. I could only compare him 
to a child, the more you teased the more 
pleased was Major. He was very fond of 
chicken bones, imitating in this my parrot 
whose fondness for this article of diet has, 
on several occasions, endangered his life. 
He is also a lover of sweets, especially our 
northern-made cookies. 

In case he has had more food than 
needful, he very cautiously hides it, and 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 205 

his methods are most amusing. The 
keen eye that he keeps on his friends, the 
swaggering gait, and the confidence he 
has in his ability to outwit us is ever fruit- 
ful of health-giving laughter. I have 
seen him on several instances watch the 
pert fox-terrier hide a bone (with the ut- 
most solemnity). A close watch dis- 
covered his object when later Major flew 
to the hiding place and with loud cawing 
set to work to unearth the bone. My 
boy had only one word to express the 
reason for things being done different to 
his mind. He called it "deviltry," and 
this word he applied to Major's proceed- 
ing, and I cannot but admit that the word 
covered his actions, for once the bone was 
above ground Major flew away and was 
ever after indifferent to its fate. A neigh- 
bor satisfied with my success in crow- 
taming, and desiring to follow in my foot- 
steps, procured a young bird, and having 



206 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

spent much time on his education, pos- 
sessed a bird much superior to Major. 
He calls him Charlie, and Charlie, although 
living at the other end of the town, passes 
most of his time in my yard philosophiz- 
ing with the Major who permits his friend 
the freedom of the entire property save 
the kitchen. Here he will not allow him 
to enter. I know why but I am not going 
to pull my friend's character to pieces. 

As I write Major and Charlie are perched 
on the roof of the barn, not uttering a word, 
their heads well thrown back, the sun 
glistening on their backs. What an un- 
canny appearance they present ! So I 
fall to meditate on what they are thinking 
about, and I am sure it will be as profit- 
able as the meditations of philosophers. 
It can be no more barren of results than 
their speculations. Leon declares that they 
have only one thought, how to live the 
day, and if this be so, they touch closer 
than I knew the vast majority of men. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 207 

One of the most vivid bits of my early 
recollections, is a selection from Sterne, 
The Tale of the Caged Starling. To 
this day the poor bird's sad refrain comes 
to my mind at the most unlooked for times. 
What I suppose made the impression so 
indelible on my young fancy was the 
teacher's voice as he read, 'T cannot get 
out, I cannot get out," said the starling. 
The teacher's face is before me, a long, 
bony face, curved, crooked and indented 
to oddity, but lit up with eyes, large, mel- 
low, gray eyes, that won for it reverence. 
Many stories were told of his loves and ad- 
ventures, his cares, and now his sorrows, 
for ill-health and cramping years had com- 
pelled him to eke out a sustenance in teach- 
ing children, and all these stories but made 
him more conspicuously the hero of my 
childhood. When the tale was ended, he 
gathered us close to him, and, with a pen- 
cil, deftly drew the bird and its cage, de- 



208 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

scribed the starling, and told a dozen little 
tales of its doing, planting in my heart 
that love for Nature which has made me 
happy in all my wanderings. 

The purse might be light, the road hard, 
and the future dark enough, but what 
matters all these things, if there were 
meadows, along the way, babbling brooks, 
breaking flowers, birds in song. I could 
make a couch under the broad-leaved 
trees, in the thick, cool grass, Heaven's 
best music, the birds above me, and dream 
dreams that no kings could enact. He 
only, I reckon, a teacher who provides us 
with a shield against the future's tyranny. 
What a teacher ; he was my first master to 
give me a love that grows stronger with 
the years, a love that will survive and give 
pleasure when other loves more fondly 
planted, more tenderly nurtured, are dead, 
leaving but a dim remembrance, a fire-fly 
light amid the giant shadows of the past. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 209 

The life of love is growth ; even while his 
soft voice, narrating the wonderful tricks 
of the starling, fell on our ears, I must have 
been dreaming of some day owning such 
a marvellous bird, for from those early 
days came the longing for a starling. I 
so familiarized myself with the bird's fig- 
ure and plumage that I would have no 
hesitancy in picking him out ia any bird 
shop I might enter. But it was not in 
a bird shop that I first met him, but in 
a little sequestrated Irish village, lying 
on the banks of a sleepy old river, in 
whose clear pools, as the peasantry 
tell, when the moon and the stars are 
out, nymphs, the prettiest in Erin, disport 
themselves, singing songs that lure the 
human heart to death. On an early morn- 
ing, I sauntered from this town along its 
leading way until I reached a glebe, the 
property of an English clergyman, and 
could go no further, held by the beauty of 



2IO BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

the place. I entered the gate and walked 
up the broad avenue, shaded by the fra- 
grant horse-chestnut. The lawns, which 
extended from the avenue, were dotted 
with small trees, juniper and holly and 
flowering shrubs, mostly the rhododen- 
dron, then in gorgeous bloom. From a 
little patch of furze, ablaze in the love of 
the sun, came the thrush's "fine, careless 
rapture. " In front of me in the holly was 
the blackbird, his fine golden tune filling 
the woodland with his magical spell. 

On the avenue at their ease, picking in 
the gravel or hopping by the edge of the 
lawn, were chattering sparrows and rob- 
ins half awake, trilling now and then a 
liquid note. 

The goldfinch was calling from the 
sycamores, a bulfinch shot through the 
greenery of the hawthorne hedge giving 
me a bit of his color and a few sleepy 
notes. In the meadows the larks were 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 211 

rising and descending, scattering through 
the clover-scented air the stolen music of 
the gods. 

Amid these scenes, fit abode for a 
dreamer, came my first starling, shooting 
in and out through a bit of straggling 
hawthorne hedge, the steel blue and the 
dark green and purple of his coat flashing 
vividly in the sunlight, but seeming to 
change to other colors as the bird went 
further from my view. I could under- 
stand the truth of diverse description of 
this bird's plumage, for while his true 
color is that revealed to me in the haw- 
thorne hedge, it seems to vary with the 
degree of sunlight and shade. But he is 
a handsome bird, no matter in what light 
he is seen, while in cleverness he is eas- 
ily the master of all his bird companions. 
He is as light and true on his feet as a 
Parisian dancing master, and his grace 
under the most arduous circumstances, is 



212 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

always that of the best society. I have 
never seen a starling with that slatternly 
droop common to so many birds in the 
woods, when they think that they are un- 
observed. He is always on dress parade. 
I sat down on a rustic seat, a seat, I 
learned afterwards, that was the favorite 
resting place of the owner, an observant 
and highly-gifted man, whose love for 
birds had filled his grove with song when 
other groves were silent. Love conquers all. 
The starling was joined by his mate, after 
I lost sight of him, and when he returned 
with her and entered a cherry-bush I was, 
as the children say, "all eyes," My 
patience and vigilance was repaid, for I 
witnessed a pretty bit of bird courtship, 
and though the maiden did not, in my 
presence, become engaged, there was 
something about her that told me she was 
perfectly willing to be so, and that her 
impatient air and angry manner was put 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 21 3 

on to increase her value in the eyes of the 
amorous male. Love, what a plague 
you are, blinding our eyes to mockeries 
and veriest delusions ! Once, when the 
male tired of his entreaties, sulked and 
flew away, the female immediately 
showed a power which intrinsically be- 
longs to all her class by whistling him 
back to more utter subserviency. I left 
them to their quarrels, well knowing the 
result, and sought the little town, now 
awake from its sleep, amused on my way 
by the antics of a chattering magpie. My 
next meeting with the starling ^was at an 
old English inn, one of those that Hazlitt 
loved to frequent, where a bottle of wine 
and a chicken might be easily had after 
one of his long, country rambles ; I know 
of no hostlery to compare with these 
inns. 

One can apply to them what Maurice 
De Guerin calls that "deliciense express- 



214 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

ton Anglaise qui resume tout le chez sot — 
at home." The starling I saw at this inn 
brought me no joy, but a certain jerk ot 
sharp pain, leaving in my memory an 
impression that must ever remain there. 
Almost in front of the inn grew a large 
sycamore tree. The morning after my 
arrival it was alive with starlings on their 
annual passage, and no prettier sight can 
be seen than a flock of those birds whose 
motions are constant and whose plumage 
assumes, under the sun's rays, such vary- 
ing colors. The jolly master of the inn 
had just called me to see the pleasant 
sight, when bing, bang, bang, went the guns, 
and by the time I hurried to the street, 
more than forty starlings lay dead and 
wounded around the trunk of a tree, their 
beautiful plumage bespattered with blood 
and dirt. The actors in this miserable 
affair were boisterous, telling of their ex- 
ploits, and a crowd, drawn by the gun's 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 215 

report, were listening, with glee in their 
eyes, to the wanton, cowardly destruction 
of the birds. Such heartlessness I have 
never seen equalled. I left the town in 
disgust, though I had planned to spend a 
few weeks amidst its beauties which were 
inviting me on every side, but the murder 
of the birds stole away all the charm that 
would have been mine in this rustic re- 
treat. 

A starling came into my possession a 
few years ago, without the slightest ro- 
mance attached to it. A New York bird 
dealer had it in his possession for two 
years and, being unable to sell it at any 
price, gave it to me with a few birds I had 
purchased. "Do you see that starling," 
said the bird man, — "he just looks as if 
death would be a relief; if you want to 
bother with him I'll throw him in with 
the rest." 

The bird was in a bad plight, a sorry 



2l6 BIRDS AND BOOKS 

object to behold. He had been confined 
to a small cage, had been deprived both 
of his exercise and bath, and the conse- 
quence was that most of his feathers, and 
especially those of his head, were rubbed 
off, his wings trailed hiding the sore and 
dirty feet; the eyes were heavy and dull, 
but Hope, always hid in the human mind 
as it was in Pandora's box, came to my 
succor when I had the words of refusal 
on my lips, giving me enough of cheer to 
suppress them and permit the starling to 
be mine. I started home that night with 
the birds, arriving there the next afternoon 
and transferred them to cages. 

The starling was so weak that his feet 
doubled under him, but Hope still stood 
by me. Leon was sent to the cabbage 
path to find some slugs, while another of 
my household procured a large, wooden 
cage, sprinkled it thickly with sand * and 
placed in it a large bathing pan. All 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 2\f 

being ready, I put the starling, to whom I 
gave the name of Hope, in the bottom of 
this cage and in a little dish in front of 
his bill, the appetizing slugs. He glanced 
at them cautiously, touched them gently 
with the front of his beak and then, mind- 
ful of old memories, greedily devoured 
them. A few days later he took a little 
hurried dip in his bath-pan. To the slugs 
and seed I added fruit and a little red 
pepper now and then. In three weeks he 
w T as able to perch and in less than eight 
days from that time his recovery was com- 
plete. I had handled him so much in the 
days of his sickness that all the wildness 
had gone out and a thorough attachment 
taken its place, which was proven on many 
occasions. He became a great favorite for 
his droll ways and the restless activity 
with which he busied himself from morn till 
night. His love of fine clothes was very 
marked , for not a single particle of dirt was 



2l8 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

allowed to rest on his well-polished coat. 
No old Roman loved his bath more than 
Hope, and I have again and again stopped 
my writing to watched the felicity with 
lie bathed. He would totally abandon 
himself to its delight, plunging into the 
basin, tossing the water with his head, 
flapping it with his wings, all the while the 
*eyes sparkling with joy. 

I have tried, following the tale of Nor- 
man Macleod's Starling, whose talking 
propensities brought so much trouble to 
his loving master, to educate Hope to the 
making of short phrases, but so far my suc- 
cess has been less than moderate. He 
says, "Ho, ho, well, well," but further in 
speech-making he refuses to go. If men 
were only so modest what peace on earth ! 
But left to himself he has composed the 
most wonderful medley of sound. He has 
taken the notes of all the birds in my house 
and all those he has heard in the bird 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 219 

store and mixed them up in the most 
humorous and laughable way. To these 
lately he has added the screeching of the 
parrot, and the bray of a neighbor's don- 
key. This complicated masterpiece he 
is entirely too willing to pour forth, and 
especially so if any strangers are around 
him. He hangs now in the parlor and, as 
I write, he is piping this masterpiece and 
half a dozen merry children sitting in 
front of him. His fame has gone abroad, 
his eccentricities have made his reputation, 
and there are those who swear that the 
song is his own, "a great song, a veritable 
masterpiece." 

I know better, but nought shall I say, 
advised by Shakespeare, 

"A friend should bear his friend's infirmities." 

Somehow or other, in early childhood, 
I came to have an idea that the owl was 
not just earthly, or, to better express my 



•220 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

mind, that it had doings with the world 
which lies beyond Nature. And this 
foolish idea still clings to my head, not* 
any longer, it is true, as a belief, for a 
moment's reflection shows its absurdity, 
but as the first impression that passes be- 
fore me at the mention of the word owl. 
This is but a proof, how difficult it is to 
eradicate our earliest sensations, and the 
indentions they make when later life 
comes with its corrective hand. Biography 
assures me that a complete success here 
cannot be obtained, and hence I have 
come to believe that the phrase, "The 
child is father of the man/' can be taken 
in a stricter sense than that thought of 
by the poet. 

This idea of the owl must have arisen 
from the strange stories I heard of him in 
those early days. 

By the chimney corner in the winter 
nights, when the wind sang his mournful 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 221 

music through the pinery and made 
strange sounds in every corner of the 
house creating a mystic atmosphere around 
us, we, children, heard tales of this bird 
that made us afraid to climb the stairs 
that led to our cots, and when there, 
turned to very torment all our waking 
hours. These tales told how he could 
speak, dance, and turn himself into every 
possible shape. 

How vividly I remember waking up one 
beautiful, moonlight night, when the stars 
were looking through the window, filling 
my soul with beauty and wonder, how the 
memory of an owl that had turned him- 
self into a maiden, and carried away a 
boy, changed all these pleasant sensations 
to pain, and kept me hid under the bed 
clothes in abject fright, until that most 
loveable of all the gods, Morpheus, struck 
my forehead with his golden wand, and 
bade me dream and artifice more pleas- 



222 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

ant figures than changing owls. Even 
in boyhood this fear continued, and 
amidst all the dreams I dreamt in those 
happy days, reading Buffon and extracts 
from Audubon, there never came one for 
a desire to own an owl. Bird lovers' 
tastes develop from the- bird to the race, 
and I can no longer claim any detach- 
ment on the score of the owl. He, too, 
has a place in my heart. Here is how 
my passion started. 

I had been on a hunting expedition, in 
the heart of the Adirondacks, and on such 
occasions, early rising is indispensable to 
secure game. One morning I was at my 
post a few minutes after five waiting for a 
shot. This post was by the side of a huge 
cedar that grew by the edge of a little for- 
est brook. From afar off, I could hear 
the glorious music of the dogs, making 
me impatient for the approach of the deer, 
but soon the music died away, the morn- 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 223 

ing's air became chill and more piercing, 
and with these things, my attention dull and 
listless, until finally I wrapped my catskin 
coat close around me, put my Remington 
safely against the tree, threw myself on 
the ground, and was soon fast asleep, un- 
mindful of dogs and deer and all my wak- 
ing glories. From this delightful sleep, 
(for there is no sleep comparable to that 
taken in the open), I was aroused by a 
series of hideous cries that I can bring no 
language to picture. My first feeling was 
one of fright, but remembering that the 
Remington was at my hand and that my 
reputation as a sportsman was at stake, this 
feeling passed for one of anxious curiosity 
to lodge a bullet in the heart of the monster 
which, I was comingto believe,was no other 
than a dreaded catamount of whose prow- 
ess and cunning, I had heard a dozen stories 
around the camp-fire. Again I heard the 
hideous cries and this time much louder 



224 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

than before, and blending with them came 
the running music of a couple of dogs, and 
a few minutes later a breaking of the brush- 
wood and a crackling of leaves. I had 
barely time to grasp the gun when a huge 
deer was within a few yards, coming at full 
speed. A well-aimed bullet brought him 
to the ground, and as he fell in death's 
throes, a large bird flew from above my 
head into the thickness of the forest. It 
was an owl of the species known to wood- 
men as the hawk-owl, and this was the 
monster whose unearthly cries had aroused 
me from sleep, and put me in an attitude to 
slay the lordly brute that lay at my feet. 
For this service I owed him at least some 
sort of recognition, which I gave to him in 
the form of trying to disengage my mind 
from the mass of prejudice heaped against 
his race in my childhood, and from this ef- 
fort came the ambition to possess an owl 
and study his ways at my leisure. This 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 225 

ambition was fostered by my friend and 
neighbor, who had a long experience with 
these birds. One is worth relating. 

He had a very large eagle that had been 
captured in the wilds of Canada when very 
young, and was in some degree tame, at 
the time to which I refer. He was kept in 
a wired apartment chained by the leg, and 
had for his companion a large owl. They 
w r ere chained in such a way that they 
could just touch bills. I had often been 
their visitor, and had for hours listened to 
their master's tales, of their love for each 
other and good comradeship. 

One winter's night the owl slipped his 
chain, and in the morning, when my friend 
visited his pets, he found the ow r l plucked 
quite clean and partly eaten. He has an- 
other owl, but it is not in the same apart- 
ment as the eagle. Enthusiasm is always 
tamed by experience. It was to this friend 
whose love for everything in Nature is so 



226 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

well known to the country people, thatthey 
send him all kinds of birds and animals 
that fall in their way, that I owe my first 
owl whose mounted figure now sits on my 
writing desk, with that same calm and 
grave attitude which he bore in life, as if the 
problems of the world pressed heavy upon 
him.- It but shows the acuteness of the 
Greek mind when it dedicated this bird to 
Minerva. 

My friend's gift was, at his own sugges- 
tion, placed in a screen wire cage and in a 
part of the cellar that was both comfortable 
and easy of access. He was of the same 
species as I had heard in the Adirondacks. 

At first he was warlike and vicious 
ready to pounce upon my hand, as I care- 
fully pushed it toward him. He would not 
eat in my presence, his only game to watch 
every movement of my body, holding him- 
self on defense, and uttering ho, ho, in a 
jerky way which I took to be his battle cry. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 227 

When the fox terrier, who is always at my 
back, came to the cage, Cato threw him- 
self on his back and worked his legs like 
two drum sticks. As his cage, was large 
and the handling of him difficult, I built a 
stand much the same as that used for par- 
rots, and removed him to it, giving orders 
that I was to be his only visitor, which I 
might here remark was unnecessary, as 
my household took no interest in his 
affairs. I visited him regularly for over 
three months, without making the slightest 
impression upon him, and I was beginning 
to get tired of his refusals to my compan- 
ionship when Leon suggested a new means 
to conquer his resistance. The boy had 
caught hold of a dozen mice and his sug- 
gestion was that I should present one of 
them to Cato with my compliments, prom- 
ising him more of the same dainties for his 
friendship. I took the mouse, tied a string 
to its hind leg, and held it in front of the 



228 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

philosopher who watched with his one eye 
the frantic efforts of the mouse to get away. 
As I let out the string, and the mouse ran 
further from his stand, his interest so in- 
creased that he flew from his perch with 
all grace and dignity, and when he return- 
ed the mouse was in his keeping. After 
he had dispatched the mouse I approached 
close enough to scratch his head, after 
which I gave him from my hand another 
mouse, and from that day until his untimely 
death, Cato gave me no more trouble. I 
cannot say that his affection was very de- 
monstrative, but it was solid. And that 
was more befitting his sober look. 

"Our outward act is prompted from within." 

After having him in my possession for 
almost a year I gave him a chance to seek 
his liberty, did he desire to do so, by 
leaving the cellar door open. Toward 
dusk he came to the yard, flew to the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS 229 

barn, entered it and was soon lost to my 
seeing. I then made up my mind that 
Cato had for good taken his departure, 
but, on the advice of Leon, leaving the 
cellar door open I was astonished next 
morning to find Cato perched in his old 
place looking nothing the worse from his 
night's outing. 

After this I gave him full liberty, and 
to this liberty must I attribute his early 
death and the loss of incentive for further 
owl studies. 

It happened in this way. In the cel- 
lar, as in most cellars of our Northland, 
there are large, uncovered cisterns to hold 
soft water. One morning Cato, whether 
for the purpose of drinking or other pur- 
pose unknown to me, I cannot say, sought 
this cistern. When Leon found him he 
was in the centre of it, as wise looking as 
ever. With the aid of a hooked pole he 
was brought to land, rolled in a flannel 



230 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

cloth and by the boy's hands lovingly de- 
posited by the fire. He made not the 
slightest resistance. It has often been my 
study the taming effects the coming of death 
has on the wildest animals. Some years 
ago I saw a remarkable instance of this 
in the death of a catamount. For five 
minutes before his death he paid no 
attention to us, allowing us to pass over 
his body freely. It seemed to me, how- 
ever, that during this time his eyes were 
telling the awful pain of the final conquer- 
ing. Just as he rolled over in death I 
caught in his eye the same look as I once 
saw in the eyes of a dying bandit, the 
protest of unbridled liberty against the 
despotism of civilization. 

Cato lay in his improvised little cot for 
a whole day. Toward night-fall I noticed 
a glaze stealing over his eyes and I knew 
that he could not last but a few minutes, 
so I uncovered him and laid him on the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 23 I 

bare floor, when he rolled on his back, 
kicked once or twice with his legs and 
then forever was calm. 

The same member of my family who 
had formerly accused Leon of capturing 
the sparrow, Kit, now came forward and 
made a long harangue much in the 
manner of Antony over the dead Caesar, 
using Cato as an illustration to act upon 
our sympathies. The pith and point of 
her charge was that Leon, having heard 
that an owl could swim as good as an otter, 
threw Cato into the cistern to test the truth 
of the tale, and finding that the bird did 
not do what his race was supposed to do 
naturally, called me to witness a so-called 
accident, but what was in reality a dastard- 
ly attempt to take the owl's life, and then 
the orator, pointing to the dead body of 
Cato, and flashing her large, lustrous black 
eyes full on the boy's face, said in pathetic 
tone, "and the villain has succeeded." 



232 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

Leon was not awed in the slightest by the 
maiden's onslaught and, when his turn 
came to speak, defended himself in such a 
gallant manner that I could not but believe 
his speech, for I hold with Shakespeare 
that "An honest man is able to speak for 
himself, when a knave is not." 

One of my boyish longings was to be 
the possessor of a parrot. When about 
six years old I read a little book on these 
birds, and it so fired my ambition that, 
when a year later a showman came to 
town with a talking gray parrot, I fol- 
lowed him from street to street in a perfect 
rhapsody of delight. His parrot, as I re- 
member, was an accomplished talker, and 
this accomplishment settled in my mind 
any doubts I had as to animals being able 
to talk. 

From that time, and for many years 
after, I was constantly on the lookout for a 
chat with Danny, the black cat, and Tobey, 



MRDS AND BOOKS. 235 

the greyhound, and if my ambition to 
discourse with these worthies was never 
satisfied, I was far from blaming them,, 
believing that fear of losing their home' 
kept them from exercising their wonder- 
ful gift, for, young as I was, I well knew 
from the nightly fireside tales what prej- 
udice there was against talking animals. 
When the showman left the town, I 
strongly desired to accompany him and 
be Polly's most loving and admiring com- 
panion, but my wishes in the matter were 
scouted and trampled upon. I was locked 
in a room while Polly and the showman 
took the main road for parts unknown, 
left lonely and sad to cry, till exhausted I 
fell asleep and found in dreams what was 
denied to my waking hours. Somewhere, 
I cannot just now tell where, the great 
English Cardinal Manning, whose strange, 
thin, pallid face and piercing eyes won 
my ardent admiration in his bare London 



234 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

house years ago, has written that the 
world is not worthy of a child's tear. The 
man was worthy of the saying, and ever 
since I read it, have I added his name to 
those to whose worth I have erected a tablet 
in the pantheon of my memory. The 
maker of such a phrase is a leader ahead 
of his times, ahead of an age that permits 
childhood to carry a thousand brutalities 
on its weak, young shoulders, turning 
what nature intended for a fair form into 
a shrunken, aching, shapeless thing, blind- 
ing the vision of the eyes, paralyzing the 
litheness of the limbs and filling the soul 
with canker. When I walkthrough the ghet- 
tos of our great cities, and behold such 
misshappen things speaking so keenly to 
my soul of the rapacious blind greed of 
those who command, and the living tor-, 
tures of those who must obey or die, I 
wonder if our age ever pauses to think 
what kind of human beings she proposes 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 235 

to give as a legacy to the future, for the 
child is father of the man, and the man 
will be father of the child, and so on, until 
in time the brute men, goaded by their 
matadors, will become as fierce as Spanish 
bulls, and the wrongs of years will be ad- 
justed in blood. In a bird store in the 
capital of Old Mexico, kept by a French- 
man who came to give Mexico a king, and 
seeing the king shot and his fellows cap- 
tured, became a good republican and 
swore fealty to the land of his adoption, I 
saw the largest collection of parrots that 
fortune could bring to a bird lover, and 
many of them, mostly the native bird, so 
cheap as to tantalize my heart into barter, 
but my reason held out, showing the ab- 
surdity of any such proceeding. 

I was a wanderer and did not know 
the length or extent of my wanderings. I 
had no settled place of abode, here to-day 
and away to-morrow sort of existence. 



236 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

As the Frenchman loved to talk English, 
though I understood him much better in 
either French or Spanish, and as I have 
always been willing to have a man mount 
his hobby in my presence, I soon became 
a great favorite with Monsieur Bourgeois, 
an acquaintance which gave me a respec- 
table and delightful lounging place, and 
the dapper little Norman a chance to 
practise his loquacity in laughable English. 
I was very willing to correct him, but I 
found him perverse to such a course, 
much preferring his own mixing, to the 
queen's authorized brew. Seeing this I 
made no further remonstrance, but valiant- 
ly engaged him whenever we met, asking 
no explanation on his part. What I did 
not understand I allowed to pass, believing 
its loss of small account. There are more 
than poets born. Bird-lovers are of the 
class to whom I refer, for no amount of 
teaching can supply the defect, and M. 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 237 

Bourgeois was born a bird-lover. Each 
parrot in his collection appealed to him 
from an intrinsic peculiarity that marked 
him from his fellows. One of his often 
repeated sayings that birds, in their dis- 
positions, are as different as men, after 
long experience, comes to me as a truth. 
Here are four canaries out of the same 
nest ; one is gay and joyous, another 
sulky, a third wild, and the fourth by- 
times combining all their dispositions. 
I know of no class of animals where the 
truth of the Frenchman's opinions is more 
evident than among dogs and the inves- 
tigator is at his leisure. M. Bourgeois 
was not a believer in the tales that have 
common currency in regard to the parrot. 
He held that the gray parrot had a very 
retentive memory and could, from con- 
stant repetition, master a short lyric, as 
he proved to my scepticism by having a 
bird for foreign trade repeat in excellent 



238 . BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

French a humorous drinking song; the 
yellow headed variety came next in his 
estimation as a talker, while for gaiety, 
and originality, he preferred him to all 
other parrots. 

A third kind, with a bar of blue on its 
head, while a passable talker in the 
romance languages, could not master our 
English tongue. I heard a species of this 
parrot a few years later, giving a fine 
imitation of a drunken, Spanish sailor, but 
I was then told that he was an uncommon 
bird that no money could purchase, albeit 
his owner was far from being a rich man. 
My good opinion of the man grew wonder- 
fully when I knew that he kept his bird 
out of love. Many keep birds for show 
and treat them with a recklessness propor- 
tionate to their egotism. 

Not so with the bird-lover who would 
fast and be cold in order that his little 
pets were warm and well-fed. Their 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 239 

songs are not for the idle crowd, but for 
the master's heart. The stories of parrots 
carrying on a conversation my Frenchman 
denounced, and a little reflection makes 
one of his opinion. 

Under, the tutelage of Monsieur 
Bourgeois I not only learned much about 
parrots and their treatment, but begot a 
revival of my old love for them, the grace 
of which still remains with me. Wonder 
not then that as soon as I was settled 
down, the anchor cast for a few years, that 
I became the possessor of a brace of par- 
rots, a gray and a yellow head. The gray 
parrot had been brought from the west 
coast of Africa in a sailing vessel, and 
had mastered a few nautical terms. In 
my possession he became so wild and 
sulky that no one could approach his 
cage, and after a few weeks of continual 
beating his head against the wires, lay 
down and died. 



240 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

All my care was now turned to the yel- 
low head. I put him in my study where 
he was under my own eyes, and where I 
could note his slightest indisposition. 

I was rewarded for all my care, for Sen- 
or became in a short time such a pet as to 
have no need for a cage. My first bound 
to his intimacy was through a chicken bone 
of which he is passionately fond, dropping 
all other eatables for this dainty. 

Hold up a chicken bone and Senor im- 
mediately lays his plans to procure it. 
He dances up and down his perch in the 
most ludicrous fashion, with the most 
gracious series of bows ; if, after this old 
fashioned, waltz, the bone is still kept from 
him, he gives an imitation of the .-summer 
song of a Mexican burro, and by this time 
the bone is willingly put in his claws. 

Then he seems to have perfect enjoyment 
and will be heedless of his surroundings 
until the fox-terrier makes his appear- 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 241 

ance, when his feathers become ruffled 
and his loud cry of "dirty dog," re- 
sounds through the house. This terrier 
has snatched Polly's bone more than once, 
and between them has come a bitter ha- 
tred that will grow with the years, for 
neither of them will speak the first word of 
friendship. 

Wherever they meet Polly Senor calls 
Jack an abusive name, and he, in dog 
speech, swears most outrageously at Polly's 
importance and impudence. With the 
Great Danes and St. Bernards, Polly is on 
the most friendly terms, calling them by 
their names in my voice, and with such an 
exact imitation that they run to her with 
great speed. 

One of the dogs, a Great Dane, called 
Caesar, is very fond of Polly, and Polly 
reciprocates all the affection lavished upon 
her by perching upon Caesar's back, sleep- 
ing between his huge paws, balancing 



242 BIRDS AND BOOKS. 

herself on his nose, and the hundred odd 
ways she has of passing an hour with a 
friend. Polly sings a few snatches of a top- 
ical song that Leon taught her during my 
absence, and, to my great disgust, as it 
was my intention to put in her mouth but 
classic poetry, but since she came under 
my boy's tuition I note a decided aversion 
to polite literature, and at the same time a 
wonderful quickness to catch and repeat 
phrases that were better left unsaid. 

While I praised Polly to a clerical 
friend of mine as a pious and prayerful 
bird, rejoicing the heart of the good man, 
Polly laughed loudly, and made use of a 
phrase that is not permitted in good society. 
To this I called the boy's attention and 
was on the point of giving him a scolding, 
when the haughty bird sent us with a roar 
of laughter to the society of a distin- 
guished personage, none other than 
Monsieur Satan, to use the phrase of the 



BIRDS AND BOOKS. 243 

Englishman who gave it as the equivalent 
of le diable. The boy was not slow to 
take it as a text to vindicate his honor. 
"Did I teach her that bad word?" he 
asked. "Answer me that. If you did 
not hear her yourself I would be blamed 
for putting it into her head, but she needs 
nobody to prompt her, for her head is just 
full of such stuff, and whenever any body 
is around she says it to be mean." What 
could I do but laugh at the boy, bird and 
my pious friend, vowing that henceforth I 
should place no confidence in the talk of 
Polly Senor. I heard later that the pious 
friend was shocked at the bird's villany 
and would visit me no more, on which 
occasion I gave thanks that the Lord made 
my life a little more pleasant. Of all 
bores none is more wearisome than the 
Pharisee. 



KUG U 



\m 



